No fish can swim until the King is born, until the King is born in Tupelo.

Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it

As people buy less and less records, it's become more and more important for me to spend more and more on them - to lavish that much more attention on them. The Bad Seeds were always quite protective and old school, but Grinderman has opened us up to do anything and be shameless. We're not so precious about it.

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.

The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.

There's always pain around. That's one thing you can guarantee in life - there will always be a surplus of pain.

The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.