John Cale

"The viola is the saddest of all instruments."

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

"The avant-garde makes more sense to me."

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

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

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

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

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

"Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a shower which doesn’t have any water in it."

"I use cracks on the sidewalk to walk down the street. I'd always walk on the lines. I never take anything but a calculated risk, and do it because it gives me a sense of identity. Fear is a man's best friend."

"I am a ham. I've no business being rock 'n' roll. I've said it over and over again that I'm a classical composer, dishevelling my personality by dabbling in rock 'n' roll."

"I'm bent on proving that you can make living as musician and not die young and crazy like Mozart."

"I only hope that one day John will be recognized as … the Beethoven or something of his day. He knows so much about music, he's such a great musician. He's completely mad - but that's because he's Welsh."

"John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground."

"Never knew whether John Cale wanted to be Elvis Presley, Frankenstein's creature or the young Chopin."

"John Cale is a f*cking elitist. He did not like the people he was playing for. He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards."