Clip from a 2003 interview with the German TV station ZDF. You can listen to the full interview here.
"Reading, reading requires sitting alone by yourself in a quiet room and I have friends, intelligent friends, who don't like to read because they get—it's not just bored ... there is an, there's an almost dread that comes up, I think here... about having to be alone and having to be quiet."
"And you see that when you walk in—when you walk into most public spaces in America it isn't quiet anymore... they pipe music through."
"And the music's easy to make fun of because it's usually really horrible music but it seems significant that we don't want things to be quiet ever anymore."
"And, and, to me, I don't, I don't know that I could defend it but that seems to me to have something to do with when you, when you feel like the purpose of your life is to gratify ... yourself ... and get things for yourself... and go all the time, there's this other part of you that, that's the same part that can kind of, almost hungry for silence and quiet and thinking really hard about the same thing for maybe half an hour instead of 30 seconds that doesn't get fed at all. And it, um, it makes itself felt in the body in a kind of dread ... in here." (rubs center of chest)
"And I, I don't know, I don't know whether that makes a whole lot of sense but I think it's true that here in the U.S. every year the culture gets more and more hostile."
"And I don't mean hostile like angry. Just it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or look at a piece of art ... for ... an hour."
"Or to listen, to listen to a piece of music that's complicated and that takes work to understand, because, well, there are a lot of reasons, but, um, but particularly now in computer and internet culture everything is so fast." (snaps fingers three times quickly)
"And, uh—and the faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves but don't feed the part of ourselves that likes ... ... (sotto voice) that likes quiet.
"That can live in quiet ... you know ... that can live ... without any kind of stimulation."