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

There's a certain moment when you realize that you've actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. . .When it works, baby, you've got wings.

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.

I was number 1 on the who's likely to die list for 10 years...I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.

I haven't stopped smoking...anything

In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, “It's me, your father,” but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.

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.