I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn't want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. 'Discreet Music' was like that, and 'Music for Airports.' What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

Whenever there's a new music, there's a new way of listening. And whenever there's a new way of listening, there are new musics that follow from that. And people start listening differently -- that can either mean in different places or at different volumes or in different social groups or through different technologies.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

I'm often accused of being ahead of my time, but it's simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.

I think audiences are quite comfortable watching something coming into being.

I believe in singing. I believe in singing together.

We're going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It's the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong. It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of flip-flopping when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future.

It's amazing how quickly people get used to bad quality.

There is a sort of convergence starting to happen between the computer and musical instruments, but it's still quite a long way off.

Most game music is based on loops effectively.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

I suppose I am reluctant about being any sort of 'star' and I didn't particularly want to be portrayed as one.