L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

Look, when I look back, from 20 onwards, I was actually having a pretty good time, I have to say.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

It's always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.

When I’m singing “Deanna,” for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.