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I find that, maybe because I'm also a singer, I hear music in characters all the time, even if they don't sing. I hear what affects me in my heart.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

There's so many singers, you watch them and a lot of it is waving around. You don't get this feeling that they're really thinking about what they're saying.

Music tells you about the artist and what they were thinking about at the time, because the person has to think about it to sing it.

You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don't know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.

A song is a lot of things. But, first of all, a song is the voice of its time. Setting words to music gives them weight, makes then somehow easier to say, and it helps them to be remembered.

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.