My dad isn't sure how I make a living because I'm not in the newspapers or on music shows any more. The world is bigger than England, however, but for the large part, yes, people don't know who I am. What are you gonna do? Unless you're a superstar act that attracts young people because it might be their last chance to see you before you die, then it's fairly typical. I'm astonished that I have any audience at all, to be honest.

I never learned music. I'm quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I'd done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they're living in a soap opera.

Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

I do not wanna write a song like 'Coathanger' so Andrew Breitbart can rage against me on his web site. It's not my idea of fun.

Oh, man, pop singers are terrible actors. We're all bad.

When the mighty chains of darkness had me on the ropes, everyone said quit now, that's when I found hope.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.