Rest is not idleness and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day listening to the murmur of the water or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waste of time.

I didn't really see the British punk movement if that's what it was as wildly original because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973 really.

I've been told the weirdest things: 'Yeah I love taking a bath to your music!' or 'I gave birth to my daughter while listening to your music.'

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage talking to the audience looking at them and smiling that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now but there are still moments of awkwardness.

That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling hanging out having fun enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that not knowing how to play music - well still not knowing how to play music.

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

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 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.

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.