['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

Maybe my biggest aim is to bring a sense of that old mystery of rock 'n' roll into the new age of today's instantaneous and fast world.

The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.