Quotes from Ryuichi Sakamoto

My concept when making music is that there is no border between music and noise.

I'm concerned by a deficient technology. In other words, errors or noises. It absorbs me, and I wonder if new cultural currents could emerge from this deficiency.

I'm lucky that I have people listening to my music, waiting to see me in North America.

I wanted to hear sounds of everyday objects - even musical instruments - as things.

Playing jazz in restaurants is too stereotypical.

I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.

It was a very rare moment in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Ordinary people went out to the streets to speak anti-nuclear sentiments.

An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back.

When I do one thing for a long period of time, my attention is usually then drawn in the opposite direction.

When I lived in Japan, I only noticed the bad aspects of the country. I didn't really like Japan then, but when I moved overseas, I was able to appreciate the good side more.

I love to be anonymous.

I don't really know about the art world.

Looking back at my early career, I had a positive view of technology and its potential. It was a happy time, that's for sure.

I easily fall asleep during a movie.

In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.

I have a longing for violin or organ. Is it too simple to say those sustaining sounds symbolise immortality?

I think there's a genuine difference between the real and the virtual in music.