“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.”

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.

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

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.

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 never liked making albums.

Someone told me once that Lucinda Williams takes six years between albums, and that’s what stuck to me; it’s like, you really are a factory. You don’t do things to make them, on your own time.

Using what you have always enhances what’s to come no matter if it’s an album, song, artwork or whatever.

You never know when you put out an album that’s unique whether it’ll get beat up for it or not.

For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

Im the eldest at 51, and if the Stones can drag themselves around once more, then theres a few more albums in us.

If My New Album Isn’t Out in 2014, Something is Seriously Wrong!

I’ve recorded 25 or 30 albums. I know that sometimes when you work with producers who are kinda dictators, it doesn’t help you make a better record.