And I decided I really felt I was missing a lot of things in my tai chi education, and that the answer to it was Master Ren.

Bodily changes take place, like the thing with the kick.

But I found tai chi when I was studying with Leung Shum, who teaches Eagle Claw and Wu Hao.

But I'm also talented and I know when I created something great and Perfect Night is something great, no doubt, no but.

But in this particular instance he had showed me something, and I know I have a very short attention span, and have to always compensate for it, so I was very much afraid that if I didn't stay on top of this thing, I knew the next day we'd go over the very same thing again.

But it's the things that preceded it that made that happen, and of course now someone like me thinks, well, if I can do that... then there are a lot of other things that are possible.

Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does.

From the minute I saw Master Ren do fajing, I thought I will study this forever.

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it.

I always thought martial arts was the most modern choreography we could have right now, and I always wanted to put it to music.

I can concentrate on my art.

I cleaned up my act because otherwise I would have kicked the bucket.

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album.

I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts.

I had started also studying because I wanted to learn more about power and fighting.

I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.

I mean, there are peripheral things I do, I do photography, I write plays, I have books published, but that's neither here not there.

I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.

I think life is far too short to concentrate on your past. I rather look into the future.

I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen.

I try very much, whenever I do projects, whatever it is, there's only one thing on my mind, only one thing.

I was interested in making them sound as good as I can make them because the original mixes really hold up because they are recorded on to tape and they sounded really good.

I'm an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be.

I'm in this business for too long to be halfhearted about anything.

I'm not joking around when I've said occasionally, trying to learn how to play a D chord properly has been a very big thing for me.

I'm too old to do things by half.

I've found that from my point of view, the Chen style contained many things that I knew on a fairly superficial level from Eagle Claw, and that had Chen elements of what seemed to me the soft in Eagle Claw.

If someone teaches you alignment and - I'm not a tai chi expert by any stretch - so interviewing me about tai chi is kind of the cart before the horse - but just from my point of view as a student, it's simply that Master Ren can show you the relationship of power, stance and form.

In the hotel find out is there a conference room, a board room, and at some point there's bound to be one that's empty. In you go, and you just lock it.

In the late '70s I started to search for the perfect sound - whatever that might be, before that I was mainly interested in drugs, insanity and the rock'n'roll lifestyle.

It's a live album and that means something new, a new beginning.

It's authentic and not a lot of rock'n'roll records are really authentic.

Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things.

Music was what bothered me, what interested me.

My attitude is that you very rarely come in contact with someone of Master Ren's level, so every opportunity I could get to learn from him I wanted to do that.

My God is rock'n'roll.

One of my rules is: Never listen to your old stuff.

Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat.

Perfect Night is minimalistic and that's what makes it so forceful.

Some even claim that I'm a terror, a dictator and they're right.

That's why I survived because I still believe I've got something to say.

The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

The music business doesn't interest me anymore.

There were lots of things that I recognized from my experience with Eagle Claw and Wu Hao, and here was the combination of the whole kit and kaboodle, the whole tamale in one.

There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.

There's only X amount of time. You can do whatever you want with that time. It's your time.

These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible.

Well all tai chi has the martial aspect to it, a lot of people don't know, a lot of the teachers won't show it, or they do show it but you don't really learn it, what the application is.

Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps, I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.

When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment.

When I saw that combination of grace and power, the fast and the soft, the yin and the yang, that's what I'd been looking for.

With Master Ren, if I'd tell him I can't do that and he'd say, yes you can, and it turns out I very much can do it.

You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it.

You know, when you're relaxed, you're putting it out there, and then it comes, oh, I can do that.