John Cale

I'm writing a movie about Mozart going to New York in the '60s. I've been reading so many novels.

If I'm interested in what I'm doing, other people will be interested in it.

Time plays a role in almost every decision. And some decisions define your attitude about time.

What I enjoy most about being on stage is that the natural instruments give you a greater freedom with texture. When you use natural instruments they have their own resonance.

Growing up in Wales was a pretty Draconian experience with religion.

The avant-garde makes more sense to me.

I never use the word, it's loaded. What love means to me is need.

I missed out on my teenage years. I led a sheltered life. I was practicing scales instead of playing football.

We gave up on the idea of trying to make the record a good representation of the live performance.

I'm impatient. I get twitchy. When I get that feeling I just go out and make something happen.

All of the sudden the audiences started getting younger and the spread of the attendance was really wide. I think it's as a result of the records selling more that they started following our careers.

In cities like New York and Austin, there's much more of a social context for music than in other places.

We'd hold a chord for three hours if we could.

I'm content with making records, but I don't want to be doing the same thing all the time.

People sort of know me for that solo piano music I did.

I want to get lean and mean, keep it minimalist.

The value of having a computer, to me, is that it'll remember everything you do. It's a databank.

I learn from thinking about the future, what hasn't been done yet. That's kind of my constant obsession.

Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure.

When somebody grabs a movement, you're kind of locked into it. It's all par for the course.

The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience.

If you're all loaded up on love, you haven't got anywhere else to go.

That's what my life is, writing songs.

I like what the future holds. I don't like thinking about the past.