I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

Not the torturer will scare me, nor the body's final fall, nor the barrels of death's rifles, nor the shadows on the wall, nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain, is hurled but the blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling world.

Did you see the frightened ones, Did you hear the falling bombs, Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter in the promise of a brave new world unfurlled beaneath the clear blue skies. Good bye blue skies.

I am one of the best five writers to come out of English music since the war.

I confess I've never felt like a passenger.

Part of the reason I'm doing Us + Them tour is to play my part in trying to spread the message that cooperation is a better way to resolve conflicts than confrontation. That bridges are better than walls, that nationalism and exceptionalism is destroying our world and destroying our lives.