Music is politics - it always has been and it always will be.

I'm already 30! It doesn't really feel like a landmark. When I started out, my aim was to keep making records. Just because I've reached the 10th doesn't mean I'm going to rest on my laurels now!

One of the joys of writing music is making your own mark. Study other stuff, immerse yourself in music and then tell your own truth.

Sometimes you definitely need to just let go. You need to sort of forget everything.

It would be a horrible business, a horrible sort of culture if you didn't have the candy pop as well as the real hard-hitting stuff. And I love some pop music.

I think the US and the UK are gradually growing closer together in a lot of ways. They're inextricably linked.

I would always consider myself to be political with a small "p," although it makes me mad when people say politics should be kept out of music.

My generation in the UK, they're very apathetic, a lot of them.

If you're a Brit you kinda get used to people being cold and aloof and just generally arrogant - particularly musicians. (Compared to Londoners New Yorkers are a walk in the park!)

I want to be accessible to a certain type of person who wants to walk around with their eyes open, or at least is open to the idea of change.

Do you feel safe there?"Immediately tears come down my face. "Yes.""Why does that make you cry?

Maybe home isn't a place. Maybe it's a feeling you have inside of you, being around the people who matter to you

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

Those who have not lived in the eighteenth century, in the years before the Revolution do not know the sweetness of living and cannot imagine what it was like to have happiness in life.

Pessimists see a problem behind every opportunity. Optimists see an opportunity behind every problem.

The problem is when you try to impose today's standards on people living back then. It's the politically correct thing to do, but it was a different era, a different country then.

In the normal life of an actor or director, running around, there's not much time to go to church. But there's other ways to be spiritual, too.

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.