Quotes from Steven Wilson

'Routine' was written on piano, and you can hear that. But then you listen to 'Happy Returns,' and you can tell it's definitely been written on guitar, with that singer-songwriter-y strumming quality.

It's possible that Israel will be my second home, but it won't be my only home.

I think the rock audience still likes to have a physical product. The demand for owning a physical copy is still there.

The whole notion of an alternative truth is a paradox. How can you have an alternative to truth?

We live in a world dominated by fear and paranoia.

I grew up at the very tail end of the vinyl era, and at the time, I remember, we couldn't wait for CD to come along because vinyl was so frustrating. You would buy the record, take it home, and it would have a scratch, and you would have to take it back again.

We live in the physical world, the age of the Internet, and it's very easy to disappear from view and isolate ourselves from the rest of world and become invisible.

Ultimately, I'd like to create a body of work where every album has its own personality and a reason to exist within the catalog, not just 'more of the same.'

I really love the combination of Israel and England. They are completely different. The British are very private and keep things to themselves, while Israelis aren't that way. In England, I couldn't make friends with people in the supermarket or people who work at my bank or post office, but in Israel I can, and I like that.

Pop shouldn't be a comfortable slipper. It should shock and surprise you and confront your expectations.

So many things influence me in one way or another. Some might be surprising, but that's OK.

I've been making Bass Communion music longer than any kind of other music. I don't know if you picked up a copy of a vinyl release I put out a couple of years ago of something called Altamont.

It's a cliche that music rises above it all, and it's a cliche for a reason - it's very often true.

I've seen a fair amount of concert DVDs - some of them are great, some of them are not. If there are problems with them, it's usually because of budget limitations and camerawork.

I always wanted to create my own musical world. That takes time and must be earned, and it does mean sometimes confronting the expectations of the audience.

The definition of an artist, for me, is someone who is quite selfish about their creativity.

My musical tastes are very diverse. I just never felt like listening to certain kinds of bands. There's too much great stuff out there.

Every time the mainstream media talk about progressive rock, they wheel out a clip of Rick Wakeman in a cape. For me, it's one of the most ambitious forms of music. The problem is that when it doesn't work, you end up with Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing symphonies with 60-piece orchestras and revolving pianos, which I think is ridiculous as well.

If you want to be an entertainer and just keep your audience happy, that's one thing. But to be an artist, I think, means ultimately primarily pleasing yourself, and in that respect, you constantly have this sense of confronting the expectations of your audience.

In the mid- to late '70s, there was no one better than ABBA at writing and producing great pop.

If you want to be an entertainer, then go be an entertainer and give people what they want. If you want to be an artist, then you have to be true to yourself, and you have to be prepared to confront expectations - and you have to be prepared to disappoint your fans, too.

It's always lovely to discover that the people that you kind of look up to are actually very down-to-earth people.

It's too easy now to find music, and it's therefore too easy to dismiss music, particularly music that doesn't hit you the first time you hear it.

Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.