“It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.”

If you spend 10,000 hours on the bunny slope, you’re never going to win the World Cup.

What would be the first thing I’d add back? Jesus. It sounds a little bit like a Sunday school answer, but that’s what I do. Then what’s the next thing? And I’d say, well, loving people. And then the next.

Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there’s a seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.

There’s a kind of edge to what you’re doing, the kind of leading edge of what you’re doing. Inside that edge [are elements you] are familiar with, and are probably becoming slightly bored with, as well, over a period of time. “I’ve pulled that one out before. Oh, no, I can’t I’m just fed up with that.

Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. Its a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are stupid. They take drugs. They get drunk and do all the wrong things in life. I just played it straight.

You have to watch what you eat.

One of the things I’ve had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.

I just think they’re really insecure about themselves sometimes.

My favorite designer is Christian Lacroix, not just because his clothes are amazing and I love them, but because he’s so nice.

I enjoy pumping iron, but I do try and get the yoga, ’cause it’s a nice balance to the weightlifting.

Be nice to everyone and all that.

I think it’s that wherever I go, people are so nice to me, and they come up by the hundreds, and they say nice, funny things.

Cultivates and nurtures an entirely new species of headache.

I tend to have to just get away from it all, so it is nice when touring to be able to come home for a week or two and close the door and not really see anybody.

After all those years of doing remote detonations, where we just push a button and something explodes, to actually see a nice big fat line of black smoke heading toward something that will blow up is very satisfying.