1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement.

If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us.

I do not think that my spiritual apprehensions are as dogmatically cultural as those of many people who have been brought up strictly in a particular tradition.

I mean, in 1979 I was seven. I do remember punk, though, as a playground phenomenon, and remember that it was exciting to us. It really was, to a five- or six-year-old, quite a thrilling enticement to revolt. The anarchy sign scratched in desk tops, and so on.

I really think [William] Burroughs was onto something here, when he said, "Dreams are a biologic necessity and your lifeline into space."

I think I'm probably too close to the seventies to be able to analyse them (it?) effectively.

I understand that words can mean different things to different people, and, further, that people can have different relationships with complex abstract entities such as Buddhism. To me, anyway, the entity in my life that conflicts with my creativity is Buddhism.