I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

Jesus went into the temple... overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves.

What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!

Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls.

When you are an athlete, it's difficult to take time off and say you want to come back without everyone judging you and attacking you.

The true secret to seeking the unknown is in the looking, not the finding. The journey is what matters.

Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.

I was enchanted by the escape into that meticulous world that seemed real yet not... well, it seemed not real, but very detailed and meticulous, bizarre.

If I had my druthers, I would do a lot more.

I'm very much a humanist. I'm very much pro-choice. I'm very much politically correct.

But they're laughing at you. They're not laughing with you.