Armin van Buuren

I'm not a jukebox; I don't play exactly what the crowd wants to hear - that doesn't make sense. But, I do look at people requests. At the end of the day, they are the ticket payers and they are the ones that come to the show. If I played music that purely entertains me, I'd play very weird music.

I think I prefer producing a little more than DJing because you have more freedom, you can make anything you want; it doesn't necessarily have to be four to the floor. You can go more with your mood, or the atmosphere that you're in.

The thing about dancing - what it taught me all those years - is it gives you an amazing sense of discipline in forcing yourself to do things that you know are good for you but you don't really want to do.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.