I'm glad I've given up drugs and alcohol. It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He's pathetic. It's like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.

You don't know being a performer what kind of performance you're going to give. You know you can give a certain quality of performance, but as I grow older I'm much more content in my own skin because when I come offstage, I have a balance in my life.

And there are men behind bars who pray for the light and there are men in the suburbs who pray for the night.

And these [pharmaceutical] companies are still threatening to sue. And it's like, you know, do you not have a conscience? Do you not want the world to be a better place? You're still making a profit. How much more of a profit do you want to make?

I've dodged so many bullets. Not just because of unsafe sex, but because of the amount of drugs I did, the amount of alcohol, the amount of work I was doing. I started the Elton John AIDS Foundation because I got so lucky.

I have a much better relationship with the press than I did, I think because I stood my ground.

Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me.