"There's only X amount of time. You can do whatever you want with that time. It's your time."

"I cleaned up my act because otherwise I would have kicked the bucket."

"I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play."

"Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony."

"I'm not joking around when I've said occasionally, trying to learn how to play a D chord properly has been a very big thing for me."

"I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother."

"How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?"

"When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment."

"I'm in this business for too long to be halfhearted about anything."

"I can concentrate on my art."

"Music was what bothered me, what interested me."

"I think life is far too short to concentrate on your past. I rather look into the future."

"Perfect Night is minimalistic and that's what makes it so forceful."

"Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things."

"I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine."

"Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat."

"One of my rules is: Never listen to your old stuff."

"I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album."

"I'm an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be."

"I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts."

"I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says."

"There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out."

"I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen."

"But I'm also talented and I know when I created something great and Perfect Night is something great, no doubt, no but."

"I tried to give up drugs by drinking."

"If it has more than three chords, it's jazz."

"In the late '70s I started to search for the perfect sound - whatever that might be, before that I was mainly interested in drugs, insanity and the rock'n'roll lifestyle."

"I always thought martial arts was the most modern choreography we could have right now, and I always wanted to put it to music."

"The most important part of my religion is to play guitar."

"I'm too old to do things by half."

"I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego."

"My God is rock'n'roll."

"The music business doesn't interest me anymore."