You'll find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom.

I like spiritual songs. They struck me as truthful and serious. They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.

I really didn't consider myself happy or unhappy.

People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.

It was [meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy] like looking at my mirror image.

We never thought we could ever get old.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.