Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do - unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally.

I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.

I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.

One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad playing the piano And see your other dad wearing glasses Hope that you will want to stay for a while Don't worry I know you'll have to go

Climate change has always been sort of my main focus. I think also with [what happened in Fukushima, Japan] there's still a lot to think about in terms of what's coming down the pike into the world's oceans, too.

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

I was reared on folk music.