“I’m pretty optimistic about the future of rock… it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.”

I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn’t teach it in school.

I will still carry on changing all the time.

You don’t find geniuses in street musicians, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t be really good.

A lot of people can’t be on their own. They get frightened. Isolation doesn’t bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security.

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

I know where I’m going musically. I can see my pattern and I’m going much slower than I thought I’d be going.

I don’t like being stuck in one situation, day to day.

Live Aid did feel like one hour’s rehearsal after several years, but to be part of Live Aid was wonderful. It reall was.

When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there’s a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.

Everything that came later… the roots are all there in the first album.

I like change and I like contrast.

I’m still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I’ve found that I’ve developed fears I never had before… fears of heights, claustrophobia only in cities, though, never in the country.

I’m not a guitarist as far as a technician goes, I just pick it up and play it. Technique doesn’t come into it.

Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.

Let’s just say I’m like a ship passing through storms, resting in ports now and then until it’s time to continue the journey. I once told a friend, `I’m just looking for an angel with a broken wing – one that couldn’t fly away.’

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That’s a personal point of view but that’s the way I see it. I think that’s what it’s all about. The drive, the fire, the passion – it all comes out on the guitar.

The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

From the classical guitar right through to the furthest electrical experiments and everything in-between, it’s amazing what the guitar can actually do. I mean, when one thinks about sounds.

He was right – she was beating herself up about hurting his feelings. The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century. She should have lived back when she could have gotten herself fed to some lions for a good cause.

I wish I had given more time to learning classical singing.

Romantic dramas? I love The Notebook. Titanic was great. Classic.

Yes, I tried to change the classical style in a way that people who don’t understand it can enjoy.

One thing I’m big on is believing in giving an album time. I’ll say you’ll have to give an album three years before you can call it a classic. If you can’t listen to it three years later then it’s not really a classic.