In some ways, I feel like I've been such a dilettante for so many years, just picking up instruments and stretching myself so thin.

It was funny to just take a backseat and be like, 'Wow, I might be in this crazy place, but maybe I don't need to understand everything, maybe I don't need to be someone else.'

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true.

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

As a teenager and a young adult, I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell, so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspective - told someone else's story.

My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time.

I feel like I've met most people I look up to musically. I just want to meet Chef.

The Romans would never have had time to conquer the world if they had been obliged to learn Latin first of all.

I want to be involved with young people in some way. Teenagers. Because that's the most vulnerable time. I have a fantasy of becoming a teacher one day.

Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with who shall end.

Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself

God has given him an attitude that he can deal with anything football throws at him. (on Michael Owen)

We work and that is godlike.

I was married for 30 years. Isn't that enough? I've had my share of dirty underwear on the floor.

Anyone who waits for someone else to make a change automatically becomes the follower.

I know I'm not a showy politician... I don't go drinking in parliament's bars. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, I just get on with the job in front of me and you can judge me by my record.

The light in the North is constantly a thrill for me.