The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .

I don't believe in an interventionist God

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

I'm hugely self-critical in the morning.

I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.

I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.