I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?

I think sometimes - not always - I write songs that are accessible.

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

Maybe this is all a bit of a myth, a willful desire to give each place its own unique aura. But doesn't any collective belief eventually become a kind of truth? If enough people act as if something is true, isn't it indeed "true," not objectively, but in the sense that it will determine how they will behave? The myth of unique urban character and unique sensibilities in different cities exists because we want it to exist.