I used to hide my real emotions in gobbledegook, like in In His Own Write. When I wrote teenage poems, I wrote in gobbledegook because I was always hiding my real emotions from Mimi.

If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself.

Love is real, real is love, Love is feeling, feeling love, Love is wanting to be loved. Love is touch, touch is love, Love is reaching, reaching love, Love is asking to be loved. Love is you, You and me, Love is knowing, We can be. Love is free, free is love, Love is living, living love, Love is needing to be loved.

I'd always felt repressed. We were all so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams.

In Western-style Communism we would have to create an almost imaginary workers' image of themselves as the father-figure.

Before many black singers were still labouring under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which is why I like it.

You can only breathe out if you breathe in.