I never mind the accusations of domesticity, as long as people recognise that all of us, even the luckiest, will live lives in which we have our hearts broken, suffer the loss of loved ones, worry ourselves half to death about our kids.

Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.

Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on, and though I'm not fluent in it - I like too many things, and I'm not envious of enough people - I know enough to get by.

We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.

The artistic temperament is particularly unhelpful if it is just that, with no end product.

I can see that now. I can see everything once it’s already happened — I’m very good at the past. It’s the present I can’t understand.

I'd thought I'd live with my wife, but I couldn't find one.