Years ago when DNA was going on, I produced a record in Italy but I didn't think I'd do another one.

It was very interesting for me because DNA made music without much technical knowledge at all.

We were really interested in music from all over the world. We realized that what we were doing was very close to contemporary classical music because of the lack of tonality in the guitar- the fact that I play guitar the way I play.

The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.

To some extent at that time, we injected rock and roll into that scene- we played loud and that was a huge turning point for that scene. We were involved in playing with all those people.

The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.

Certainly since then many people have taken a lot of those ideas and ridden them for years and years and made careers out of them. Part of that is willingness to do the kind of work that I wasn't willing to do. Get into a van and cover the country.

We deliberately used elements from Brazilian music and from African and Asian music. Now people can hear that but then it sounded so abstract, they couldn't hear it.

There was some conflict there over Saturday nights because we were all really broke in those days- all the money you had in the world was in your pockets. Nowadays when you're say you're broke, it's not the same thing.

Then the early punk rock period with Television and the Ramones. That's what I loved- that's what I was listening to immediately prior to when I started to play.

I had friends in this band called Mars and they used to play a lot.

We recorded that trio and it's out on the Knitting Factory label. I've got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I'll hopefully finish some time before next summer.

My parents were missionaries - I was born in the States but I grew up in Brazil.

I had this idea for a while to do mix this Al Green vibe with a samba thing. I tried to do that in many different ways. Peter added his own modern notion of funk and his own deep background in classical music.

We were interested in this notion of compression- a lot of the songs were really short so that you'd absorb them in memory rather than when you're actually hearing them.

It was a scene in the sense that we were all close and we all knew each other before the different bands had really formed. We used to rehearse in the same place.

Playing with Kip I definitely learned a lot playing with these incredible guys and hearing them.

Years ago when DNA was going on, I produced a record in Italy but I didn't think I'd do another one.

It was a turning point in the sense that as a scene, we can up with a lot of new ideas.

I just had this notion that I wanted to do the most extreme thing I could and I also very consciously wanted to do something that was very different from Mars because we were all very close.

There was a generation of people who moved here to make something of themselves. They had to really struggle and created really something on their own apart from a lot of attention. It was a really exciting time here.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

You're a Catholic in Italy when you're born, it's unthinkable to stop being Catholic. You just take the rules a lot more seriously, because it pervades your culture.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

Moving from Wales to Italy is like moving to a different country.

Italy in the first years got food, for the first year or the first periods got food. Then we got raw materials and then we got tool machines, let's say, instruments for working.

When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year. I used to speak very little but I could understand very well.

The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.

In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football.

I was a star in Italy, Austrailia, Germany and Japan before the American stations ever paid attention at all.

The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.

It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.

During my first month in Italy I lived a nomadic life.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

Italy will always have the best food.

But we did the Pink Panther not in Hollywood, in Italy.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs.

I have had the problem of seeing my male model go to Italy and... stay there.

You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.

Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.

Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

In 1917 - as we have seen, - Italy suffered a great reverse, losing 200,000 soldiers and immense supplies.

The individual couldn't find any attention in Italy.

Well, Italy had been overrun by the War, there had practically been civil war, north and south of the Gothic Line, heavy bombing, the northern industrial cities had been bombed heavily and we had political disorder before 1948.

France and Italy have not yet signed this treaty or agreed to naval limitation as between those nations, but I have confidence that in time they will do so.

And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.

Hollywood cools, and when it cools you have to go to where the work is. I ran off to Italy to do spaghetti westerns.