What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

Stay away from drugs. They're not worth it. I've tried, but there's none of them that's worth it.

It's funny; people get so doctrinaire about music. It should be the last thing you don't have an open mind about.

The best of my songs are more than just a joke. There's something else going on - a character, or it's not just a plain joke.

Short people got no reason to live.

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old, Africa is far too hot and Canada's too cold. And South America stole our name, let's drop the big one.

More of my songs are intended to be funny than almost anyone else. Sometimes maybe it cheers me up a bit. I've got a distance from it. Sometimes what I'm writing is more important to me than the rest of my life. It's more important to me that I'm writing well than anything else.