Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them.

I have this fantasy. I'm walking past a bookshop and I click my fingers and all my books go blank. So I can start again and get it right.

Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

When you're running around and playing, it's amazing ground for imagination, and that's really the biggest muscle you need for anything in the arts. I think it's probably the biggest training I've had.

I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.

Hollywood is a double feeling. Love and hate. With a talented film director, I cannot resist. They are such charming and intelligent people. But each time, it is very difficult to deal with other people. I have to satisfy other people. The director or the producer. Not me. I have to satisfy myself. But then I have to deliver my music.

New York always has a lot of creativity going on.