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" People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back? "

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" I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer. "

Robert Wyatt

Writing

Find

Hard

" My heroes are people like Picasso and Miro and people who at last really reach something in their old age, which they absolutely couldn't ever have done in their youth. "

" It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic. "

" There are people I would like to work with. It's a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I can't really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing. "

Robert Wyatt

Work

People

" I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper. "

" Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs. "

" We did not get any money from the early records. It was all taken by crooked managers. It is just a gangster's paradise. "

" If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy. "

" Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less. "

Robert Wyatt

Less

You

" People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know. "

" When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it. "

" There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz. "

Robert Wyatt

Jazz

Number

" When there is a voice in a piece of music, we tend to focus on the voice. That is probably something from when we were babies and we depended on hearing our mother's voice. "

" I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers. "

Robert Wyatt

Nature

Solitary

" I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really. "

" I'm not full of malice, but I do dislike Neil Diamond a lot, and I'm sorry that I've done a Neil Diamond song. "

" This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome. "

Robert Wyatt

Find

Single

" When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion. "

" What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done. "

Robert Wyatt

Done

Going

" On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers. "

" There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas. "

" I don't do live things. "

Robert Wyatt

Things

Live

" I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question. "

" Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't. "

" I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer. "

" I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians. "

" I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest. "

" In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made. "

" I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so. "

" The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality. "