There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope

There is a thread connecting you no matter how far away you are from someone and you know I have two or three relationships in my life that are like that.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.