Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

Law is always better than war.

When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on with its life. So my analogy was really to say that we composers or some of us should think of ourselves as people who start processes rather than finish them. And there might be surprises.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'