I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much of what our culture is comes from not just the United States in general, but New York in particular. In my case, I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

Because I'm associated with an avant-garde sensibility, people think I'm looking down on popular culture, but I don't want to be part of a new elitism.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

The missing links in my life's work, no less!