Stanley Donwood quotes:

I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something.

The packaging for music has become a sort of King James Bible, where it elevates the contents to something more spiritual. This is something else that drove me to a newspaper format. I thought, "Let's put it in a newspaper, to get away from that spiritual thing."

In America, the colors sing, they don't just glower at you. The West Coast especially is fantastic. It seems like you can do whatever you want here.

Computers don't seem real to me because there's a sheet of glass between you and whatever is happening.

I grew up in the 80s and that was the first time advertising was considered seriously as anything resembling an art form.

Music is something you hear in your head, that's all, we shouldn't give it more than it is.

Growing up and living in England, I'm surrounded by grey skies and sarcasm, so when I came to America, my first impressions were bright, hopeful, cheerful.

I come from a generation in England that considered making money or trying to promote yourself to be morally suspect.

I liked taking the elements of roadside advertising out of context because it removes the imperative and just goes to the essence of it - the pure heart of advertising.

I really love it when you get that strange combination of feelings that play against each other.

I really love newspapers. They are disposable. They are recyclable. They fall apart so easily. They are not like iPads or Kindles that can't be disposed of and end up on some third-world shore. And I love the heritage of them, the whole history of mass communication. Newspapers changed the world from being a really class based, feudal system to people being able to cheaply get information that informed them.

I'm trying to be slightly happier with myself. No one really wants to be miserable all the time.

The music is a continuing thing.

There's something unsettling about being continually sold something.

You never really get to touch anything that you're doing unless you print it out. I don't really enjoy making artwork on a computer because it doesn't seem like I've done anything.