I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority. I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.

If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.

I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.

A novel is a performance you have to plan.

It's impossible to be content all the time - you have to learn to be content in places where you're unhappy and owning your emotions, whatever they are.

You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday and you're 17 years old.