When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.
Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.
My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.
I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.
I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'
Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.
I got bored with the old way - it came too easy. I worked until I could play and chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out.
I told Celine Dion not to record that 'Titanic' song. That's about as big as you can get. 'Flashdance?' I thought, 'Welder by day, disco dancer by night - who wants to see that?'
When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it's composition. If you don't understand what it's about, you're depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.
Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.
I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.
I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.
I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.
No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.
But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.
I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
I suddenly realized that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to become that which I hated - which is the head of a record company or a digital media conglomerate - and just do whatever you want.
Basically, the reason I'm vegan is because when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I began to understand that we don't need to contribute to the killing and exploitation of animals to feed our bodies correctly.
Usually when someone says a thing is too simple, they're saying that certain familiar things aren't there, and they're seeing a couple maybe that are left, which they count as a couple, that's all.
I feel strongly that degrees are really valuable to people, and having MOOCs allow for credit down the line will increase the number of students with the confidence and wherewithal to complete degrees.
