We had to create an album where there wasn't one. I never listen to that album [ Music From the Edge of Heaven] because it wasn't an album.

I think I've gotten everything I want out of the last years, and I still feel like I have a lot of options open to me.

I thought I had fallen in love with a woman a couple of times. Then I fell in love with a man, and realised that none of those things had been love.

I want to make a pop album - something more upbeat than my stuff was in the '90s.

I couldn't change anything without changing the end position, and I'm perfectly happy now. So whatever I feel in some sense may have been a mistake in the past is, in another sense, not a mistake, because it's left me here.

I'm a perfectionist. It's a big pain in the ass and it takes a lot of my time, but it really is going well and I have to do my own things.

Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups.