I was faced with a choice: to deny my addiction and embrace that 'comfortably numb' but 'magicless' existence, or accept the burden of insight, take the road less travelled, and embark on the often painful journey to discover who I was and where I fit.

You take the risk of being rejected.

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

I confess I've never felt like a passenger.

There is a magic in some books / That sucks a man into connections / With the spirits hard to touch / That join him to his kind.

I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy.

I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul.