100 Quotes by Ryuichi Sakamoto

For me, change doesn't happen on a linear basis; it zig-zags back and forth.

I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.

All the kids at the kindergarten had to play, or at least touch, the piano. It was a good start. Then, after kindergarten, all my friends took piano lessons, so I joined them.

I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was quite busy!

To show my everyday life to the world was not my intention.

Art is often defined as a famous masterpiece in a gallery, and we are meant to visit the work and view it to appreciate it. But that is not all there is.

Just recently, I thought about how maybe I should have kept using the synthesisers more after 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'; then, I would have been a more unique soundtrack composer than I am now. It could have been my signature. But then, probably, Bertolucci would not have offered me to compose for his films.

I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.

You can use existing music in a film, but creating a soundtrack is very different. One note can be enough.