I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry.

Elvis is English, and climbs the hills. Can't tell the bullshit from the lies.

I'm very shy. That's probably one of the reasons I got so heavily into drugs.

You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix em up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this. You can use them as is or, if you have a craven need to not lose control, bounce off these ideas and write whole new sections.

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

The truest form of any form of revolutionary left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, and Allan Ginsberg's period. Excuse me but that was where it was at. The hippies, I'm afraid, don't know what's happening.

I'm quite certain that the audience that I've got for my stuff don't listen to the lyrics.