I just kind of dive in if I think I can create something that will make a difference and then try to get the numbers to stack up after the event. So most of the things I've done I would not have done if I'd have asked the accountants to look at them before.

There are millions of people out there who would love to become astronauts, who'd love to go to space - they'd love to look back at this wonderful world from space. That will be the engine that will enable us then to develop spaceships to transport people around the world at tremendous speeds in an environmentally friendly way.

I am prepared to try anything once.

The time to go into a new business is when it’s badly run by others.

People who work for me are working for what I believe in. The leaders who run our companies do so on the basis of those who came first and who said, "A company is its people." I hope my companies are run on the basis of praising their workers and looking for the best in them, not criticizing them. In the same way that you water a plant and it sprouts leaves, people flourish when you praise them.

The extraordinary thing about the record industry is how success can take off without warning.

When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin's door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I'd been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody'd seen before.