You don't find a style. A style finds you

My life is full of broken halos.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern.

If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they're asleep.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.

Love has sold more songs than you've had hot dinners.