“I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.”

This is the wonderful truth, my dear friends: the Word, which became flesh two thousand years ago, is present today in the Eucharist

For me with “The Apprentice,” it kind of blew out my business brain. I don’t really think of myself as a business person.

I’m always tweeting about food and things that I’ve made.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.

You get older and you suddenly realize the only person you’re in competition with is yourself.

Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we’re losing our individuality.

A lot of people come up to me all the time and say thank you for helping me be who I am. So my thing wasn’t just about sexuality. It was about anyone who felt different; anyone who felt out of place. Being gay was one part of it.

Whenever there’s an interview with me, I might read it, but I don’t read the comments because they’re so hateful sometimes.

And being gay isn’t so easy, either I’ve always said that if anyone ever thought I was straight they must need glasses – but when I finally came out and said, “Yes, I do sleep with men and I’m gay,” yeah, I lost record sales. There’s no question – big, big time.

What a beautiful voice he had and his music will live on as a testament to his talent. I can’t believe he is gone. I hope the Buddha will hold him in his arms. NMRK.

A lot of Donna Summer and things that maybe weren’t trendy anymore or weren’t hip in gay clubs but you’d hear them at Taboo.

Relationship is an art. The dream that two people create is more difficult to master than one.

In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.

On Madonna: She’s a gay man trapped in a woman’s body.

My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I’m quite a loving person and I’ve always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I’m very interested in other people, and if you are, they’re interested in you.

And it’s taken me the best part of 54 years to reach that point where I’m like, “I’m very lucky, I’m lucky, I’m blessed” – all of those things. I wish I could impart that to other people but I think when you’re young, you just don’t listen.

I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don’t think what you’re doing is punk rock.

Punk will never be dead to me. It’s my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.

I always thought we had more in common with punk than with anything else, but we had long hair, so we didn’t fit in that box.

In the 70s, what thrash was there? Punk came on, and that was cool. But there was no thrash.

My grandson says I’m punk.

I was a punk. I think that’s why I’m such a good person now, because I was such a bad guy then.