There's a difference between the parts that I play and who I am and who people think I am. There's quite a big discrepancy sometimes between those things.

Being a mod is more of a sensibility than a style.

You could say I'm a mod, but with a small 'm'; I don't wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it's all about.

Name anything - high-definition TV, computer obsolescence - and I'm pretty much annoyed by it.

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

I love that pre-mod jazz look of the late Fifties, the Steve McQueen style that influenced the British modernists.

Most people have a passive relationship with music and clothes, with culture. But music was my first contact with anything creative. Music is it, as far as I'm concerned.

I've got a stag weekend coming up and I've said I'm not doing anything more than a few drinks. I won't have it. I'll go home and watch Antiques Roadshow.

I hate the fact that so much of our life is computerised rather than mechanised.

True heroics, obviously, is not the absence of fear, but having that fear and doing something anyway.

Sherlock and Watson are a love story

Pain was a torn piece of paper.

Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.

When you listen to nature, it may still be difficult to live a life, but it's inspiring.

We have to change the culture of mass violence we have.

I have always been able to rise above the expectations.

I never really liked Italy. 'Lots of cement' is my long-standing quote.

You may not be able to convince everyone around you that you're doing the right thing, but you don't have to subject yourself to endless second-guessing from others, either.

I'm not here to discuss the past. I'm here to be positive...

Humans find meaningfulness where none exists because we want to create a sense of order in this chaotic universe. It's called apophenia. (And it's also the reason people believe in God.)

Give no man sympathy because he has to work - it is his blessing that he can.