Robert Wyatt
Im not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.Collection: Nature
I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.Collection: Drinking
It's funny that Chairman Mao's great hero was Napoleon, because Napoleon started out as a revolutionary for the underdogs and then made himself an emperor. In fact, a lot of revolutionary leaders do that, and you think, "Well, that's spoiling your argument. What are you doing?" But on the other hand, the people themselves are enjoying trying out all these different ways to be. I hope that, like the Japanese, the Chinese hang on to their own traditions as well as try out Western ones. I hate it when people just lose so much confidence in who they are that they abandon their own culture.Collection: Hate
It just doesnt mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.Collection: Friends
There are people I would like to work with. Its a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I cant really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.Collection: Work
We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.Collection: Song
Drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble.Collection: Drinking
People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.Collection: People
Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.Collection: Thinking
The missing links in my life's work, no less!Collection: Missing
Because of my politics, people think I'm anti-American. But I was quite the reverse. What I don't like about the United States is when the government acts like an old, imperial 18th- or 19th-century European power.Collection: Thinking
I get slightly irritated by people who say they're natural rebels because it just means that they're going to be against whatever anybody does, which is almost like saying you might as well leave it as it is. I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law. I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.Collection: Country
I think it's hypocritical to complain about the rise of China. For 50 years, we were telling everybody in the world that the big threat was Communism, so now the countries that were Communists are now rampant capitalists - and they're doing very well, in some ways much better than the UK. Well, we asked for it. We told them that's what you have to do, and they're doing it, buying up your biggest hotels in New York. You have to laugh.Collection: Country
In fact, when the fires of empire get hidden, they still stay burning underneath the moss, seething away. This is true with a lot of the countries with really difficult, impenetrable nationalist movements - countries that once had a big empire, like Turkey, England, or even in Italy, with the fascists in the middle of the last century. People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.Collection: Country
I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much of what our culture is comes from not just the United States in general, but New York in particular. In my case, I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.Collection: Art
I understand why Vladimir Putin is very popular in Russia - he's probably the first Russian leader to not apologize for being Russian. People always pin it down to one man, but there's hundreds of millions of Russians of various sorts. Putin does seem to be very popular in Russia, if only because he stands up for Russians wherever they are, which is exactly what Americans do with Americans, of course.Collection: Men
What hurts people a lot is taking humiliation.Collection: Hurt
I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.Collection: Suicide
I was a latecomer to politics. Maybe I'm just very slow. I got to everything when everyone else had left.Collection: Latecomers
I get slightly irritated by people who say they're natural rebels because it just means that they're going to be against whatever anybody does, which is almost like saying you might as well leave it as it is.Collection: Mean
I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law.Collection: Country
I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.Collection: Thinking
The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.Collection: Race
I do think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world.Collection: Thinking
I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.Collection: New York
The United States is a country where everybody can start again.Collection: Country
There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.Collection: Song
What I like about popular culture is its accessibility, and I've covered popular songs because they are amazing things.Collection: Song
Because I'm associated with an avant-garde sensibility, people think I'm looking down on popular culture, but I don't want to be part of a new elitism.Collection: Thinking
People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy."Collection: Sexy
I looked at what adults were doing and how they wanted to earn money, and I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to go away.Collection: Going Away
Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.Collection: Thinking