I don't want any description of me to be accurate; I want it to be flattering. I don't think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully - not in print anyway. We need to sell tickets, so we need good reviews.

I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it.

Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.

I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.

Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat.