I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.

I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.

And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.

Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.

Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

I find humming is very useful.

I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.

Well, I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights.

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.

And I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

Life for me is about movement.

There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.

Its a breath you took too late.Its a death thats worse than fate.

There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

Was it a millionaire who said, "Imagine no possessions"?

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.

I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

I have run large organizations, I know what it takes to create a healthy business climate, and I have more experience than Jerry Brown doing that. So it'll be a stark contrast, a career politician vs. someone who has met a payroll, gotten a return on investment, knows how to use technology to do more with less.

The duty of a toastmaster is to be so dull that the succeeding speakers will appear brilliant by contrast.

In cloning, in contrast, reproduction is asexual - the cloned child is the product not of two but of one.

In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

The cultural contrast I saw between religions... Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.