People don't want to see the guy next door on the stage, they want to see a being from another planet. You want to see somebody you'd never meet in ordinary life.

If I hadn't been living here [in America], do you think we would have gotten a Grammy? No chance.

There are a lot of good books around. People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?

You haven't been soiling your soul in public for years like we have.

...what happened in New York and Washington is the same thing that England and America did to Berlin every day for three years during World War II -- and Germany did the same thing to England.

[My favorite decade] probably the '60s, because there were hardly any rules and heroin hadn't shown up, so people hadn't started dying. It was incredibly upbeat, and we almost did change the world. I guess that was the best one .

I don't understand people who believe that if you ignore something, it'll go away. That's completely wrong - if it's ignored it gathers strength. Europe ignored Hitler for twenty years. As a result he slaughtered a quarter of the world!