A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

Songwriting is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and it doesn't make any sense until you find that last piece. It has to make sense or it doesn't work.

The celebrity thing is such a thing in itself now.

I don't like to be recognized on the street or in restaurants, and I don't like the whole celebrity thing.

I like Madonna a lot. I think she's really good and I think she's a good singer. I think she looks good and she's got a nice kind of... I don't think she's got a sinister or cynical vibe around her, and I don't think she's got any sort of bullshit around her.

I had a very colorless background, and when I left Ohio and moved to England, nobody knew who I was and I had a real freedom. I could be free to experiment and experience things and I liked that a lot.

The cliché of that sort of wasted, renegade, drugged-out musician of the '70s is kind of dead and gone now. And I suppose that a lot of people still keep relying on that, or some kind of image to perpetuate something that they think they're supposed to sound like. But that kind of takes you away from real inspiration and, you know, real artistic discovery of the individual.