Reading is more of a left-brain process and listening to music is a right-brain function.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

I have a big problem with piped music. I like either silence or to listen to it properly.

I haven't heard any music on the BBC World Service in a long time. Maybe I'm listening at the wrong times. But not one single piece of music.

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.

I listen to music for emotion and I get zero emotion from rap.

Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?

Every so often I feel I should graduate to classical music properly. But the truth is I'm more likely to listen to rock music.

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it and where it was recorded what year it was done what they were listening to and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.