"I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time."

"Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties."

"Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn't see a space in which we could get anything together."

"I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does."

"I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking."

"I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way."

"When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire."

"But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people."

"Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man."

"However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums."

"I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on."

"I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players."

"Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in."

"I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music."

"There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means."

"I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me."

"To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me."

"I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part."

"Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write."

"It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece."

"Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano."

"On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts."

"I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir."

"I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."

"I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image."

"And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan."

"But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him."

"The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time."

"When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star."