"The step-by-step horrific setup of the film is just great filmmaking. The movie starts, and you’re on a movie set, and this actress is bringing her daughter along with her to Boston, because she has broken up with her husband. So while she’s busy working, [actress] Linda Blair is at home, doing whatever, except the home is haunted, and eventually the evil spirit, a demon takes over her, and her mom doesn’t believe in it. Sure, you get the punch in the gut and the kick in the nuts when her head spins around and she spits out pea soup and everybody just flips out, but leading up to that is a very well-written script. It’s easy to do the action sequences. You sit down, and say, ‘OK, we’re gonna have a head pop off here, and then I’m gonna have a ghost dive off somebody’s ass, and use them like a hand puppet.’ OK, I get it. Those are all gonna be good hand-puppet scary moves, but what’s the script? You have to care about the characters, and stuff. That’s what we mean by elevated.”

"Why? Well, I think it’s an act of freedom, the whole entire movie, practically. They didn’t have a script. In 1962, which is the year when the movie was shot, I thought it was unbelievable that somebody would just go into an experiment like that. It’s still a very experimental movie, very emotional in a way. I like what he says about the human spirit and creation; in a way, crisis of a man confronting life, his past, his present and his future in a very formal way. I mean formal in terms of format, how the movie was told, not only in the content of the movie, which is amazing. Also in the way that he decided to just do it absolutely free, inventing new rules for telling a story and not going in a traditional way. I thought it was the masterpiece of Federico Fellini that most attracted me; I feel very proud that I know [what it’s like for] a guy like Federico Fellini, who got the balls to just jump into such believable, reflections of mirrors, you know, inside the movie."

"When I was a kid I heard all this strange electronic music that came from Germany on pirate radio and on the Peel show and it seemed like music from another planet and I wanted it. Then one afternoon I was listening to Radio 1 and Annie Nightingale played one whole side of Rubycon and it was life changing. I said to her, many years later, "that was incredible!" and she said, "oh John used to do that all the time, he was the first to do that." But it was like Annie became a pirate for one moment and took over the whole of Radio 1. That meant a lot. That was the spirit of making music to me. You do what feels right. If you want to play half an hour, you do it and accept the consequences but you have to do what the music tells you to do. Tangerine Dream made these extraordinary, electronic soundscapes. Is it an animal or is it a machine? Tangerine Dream crossed over that a lot. And then Annie played the entire side and blew my head."