Lincolnshire is the Idaho of England. You were either going to drive a tractor for the rest of your life or head for the city to work in a factory.

Basically it takes me very little time to write a song. If I find myself taking more than an hour to do it I usually forget it, and try something else. I like to work quickly; I never like to waste any time. I never write half a song and come back to it later at all. It all has to be done at once. I lose interest if it doesn't.

Early risers catch the world waking and see its true colors.

My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.

One reason I quit doing interviews after years and years and years was because I was making things up.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

Read books, discover the blues and don't Tweet.