I don't want to hold you and feel so helpless I don't want to smell you and lose my senses And smile in slow motion With eyes in love.

But I don't even think you hear me at all Under your medieval ceiling behind your biblical wall

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider.

In the present world, this technological, psychotic, politicised, nonsensical world, you have to believe that the good guys are going to win! That evil will be banished somehow!

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.

I've developed a bit of a fascination with John Denver. I always thought he was kind of tacky and somewhat revolting and had a kind of simplistic weirdness, but on second listen, he actually did have an incredible voice, and the blatant naiveté of his work is straight-edge, in a way.