Vince Clarke Quotes

Many years ago, I used to say, 'I haven't lived long enough to be great.' Now I don't say that.

The music business is very hard on women over 22. You really have to prove yourself every time you make a record. Are you as vibrant as you used to be? Are you as sexy? So I really want to prove that a woman in her 30s can be all those things and more.

I don't know whether your heart ever necessarily changes, but time changes the way that you perceive the world. And you just hope it gives you more empathy and all those other things.

I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn't have anything to prove.

You're playing serious music, and you want to be taken seriously. When they get my age wrong on the program, I wish they'd make me older.

I have very much enjoyed being in the music business in different roles through five different decades.

I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

You still have that competitive thing where you want to try to make hits. That won't go away, unless the mayor of show business says my time's up.

You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you're not going to get played on radio, and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

Whether it's 18 years old or 40 years old, we think we know what's going on. But if you're lucky enough to continue the journey, its amazing how we keep learning how much we didn't know.

I don't want to be 35 years old and still popping out songs in miniskirts and la-la-la.

A few years ago, I got to a point where I realised that the only way you can tell someone's age is how they live their life. The candles on the cake mean absolutely nothing.

I had business experience. I had made my living designing and building electronic equipment. Basic business was not new to me, but the music business was completely new to me. I knew nothing about distribution, or any of those things.

With time and experience comes a different perception of what's going on around you.

The thing that happened with the music business, there are no stores anymore where you can buy music. It's all an online business now, and that's, you know - the bookstore culture is a very vibrant part of the American experience that we're very reluctant to see go away.

You can do any number of things in the music business aside from trying to look like you're 25. To me it's embarrassing.

The music business doesn't take up that much of my time. I probably should put a little more energy into it.

The stores and the things like that, the business side of things came out at the point when, I'd say probably in the early '70s, it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over, 'cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.

I've been working in the music industry since I was 15 years old, and I feel like I've always been ahead of my time.

And I'm not as young as I once was. At my age, I don't have time to be bored.

I've been singing about love a long time now, because my kind of love carries a different flavor. My lyrics are not so outrageous as some. You have to think about a lot of different things. You get more mature with what you do - more experience, more capable, you know, the older you get.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

A lot of record company people, even though they're our age, want to be perceived as young hip guys, and they're hurting the business.

'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.