I think there is a certain perversity in my music in that I continue, you know, to eat at the same ball of vomit year after year.

Everybody tends to overplay live. That's just the nature of playing live. And that can be great, but it can also kill something that's special, and intimate, about a recorded version of a song. You find out very quickly which songs you can play, and which songs you do damage to by playing them live.

Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine.

The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.

A is for Answering all your prayers, N is for kNowing that your loverman's going to be the answer.

The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.

People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.