What hurts people a lot is taking humiliation.

Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.

I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy.

In fact, when the fires of empire get hidden, they still stay burning underneath the moss, seething away. This is true with a lot of the countries with really difficult, impenetrable nationalist movements - countries that once had a big empire, like Turkey, England, or even in Italy, with the fascists in the middle of the last century. People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.