All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

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

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

Tesla is becoming a real car company.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

My music is a luxury.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

As everything becomes digitized, there’s the idea that things that can’t be digitized become more valuable.

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

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.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

There’s something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that ‚Everlong‘ is on it, or ‚Best of You‘ is on it, and it’s really special.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

The multiplication force of technology on cognitive differences is massive.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

I’m not a futurist.