“My Mother set me on the right track, Marty Robbins made me want to write songs, and Jesus Christ did the rest.”

I am a simple vessel with complex overtones, opinionated on occasions but willing to listen.

Don’t call my lyrics poetry. It’s an insult to real poets.

Lincolnshire is the Idaho of England. You were either going to drive a tractor for the rest of your life or head for the city to work in a factory.

One reason I quit doing interviews after years and years and years was because I was making things up.

Read books, discover the blues and don’t Tweet.

Captain Fantastic’ was the first album in history to enter the (American) album chart at number one. We did it for a second time after that. Now that’s not a boast, that’s frightening.

My favorite thing is coming up with titles. The majority of the songs I’ve every written I’ve always thought of the title before I’ve written the song.

I like to work quickly; I never like to waste any time. I never write half a song and come back to it later at all. It all has to be done at once. I lose interest if it doesn’t.

My mother’s father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome.’ While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I’d be Horatius keeping the bridge.

Elton John’s home is laden with trinkets and books relating to Satanism and witchcraft.

The worst thing about me is that I’ll buy albums and put them away on the shelf and forget that I’ve got them.

Basically it takes me very little time to write a song. If I find myself taking more than an hour to do it I usually forget it, and try something else.

I will spend the rest of my life exploring what could happen through the life of one who is willing to cultivate the God-given appetite to see impossibilities bow to the name of Jesus.

This guy from L.A. sits down next to me, and he says “you like baseball?” I said, “Oh, man, I love baseball.” So he goes “Did you know that if Jesus had played ball, he’d have been the greatest ball player ever?” Like I’m gonna argue with that logic.

Anything you think you know about about God, that you can’t find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.

Jesus-murdered. Martin Luther King-murdered. Gandhi-murdered. Malcolm X-murdered. Reagan-wounded.

What if life after death is all based within memory: you die, and you don’t ascend on a bed of clouds to Jesus, but your brain has a terrain that it can use to propel itself further.

Jesus gave his life on the cross for any who will believe. We’re not redeemed by silver or gold. Jesus paid for it with his blood.

How come people always flip and think they’re Jesus? Why not Buddha? Particularly in America, where more people resemble Buddha than Jesus. ‘Ah’m BUDDHA!’ ‘You’re Bubba!’ ‘Ah’m Buddha now..All I gotta do is change 3 letters on ma belt.

I don’t know what you all believe, and I don’t really care … but you have to admit that beliefs are odd. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks … you really think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a fucking cross?