Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.

I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

I don't like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

Once music ceases to be ephemeral - always disappearing - and becomes instead material... it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.