“Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can’t do it any other way.”

We believe in a society in delusion, and if you’re awake and not deluded people tell you you’re mad. That’s why I’m a freak and they’re not. But I’m actually not.

My teeth have never been touched. Why did I tell you that? Knock on wood. I’ve got a few scars over the eyes, a couple on the chin, a few on the beak and one across the cheek. But my luck is running out.

I’ve dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.

We tend to take a great deal for granted, because you feel like you’re going to live forever. It’s only if you lose a friend, or maybe have a near-death experience, [that] many events and people in your life suddenly attain real significance.

One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.

I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead.

I’ve always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the ’80s it was a surprise to me.

When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.

I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because ‘you aren’t going to make a living doing that.’ I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.

Bowie and McCartney arrived, and the biscuits and caviare started and I left immediately. I don’t like shouting across rooms, with people in shiny suits who look like used-car salesmen.

I’m going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I’ve also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.

I think that the mythology of Van Gogh’s life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.

The most challenging work I’ve seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, ‘A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards’, is apt in these days of witless chancers.

I did not like prizes at school. I didn’t like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don’t like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.

It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.

World cross-fertilization is fantastic. Immigration across the world has led to all kinds of fantastic new and exciting kinds of food being available. And there’s all kinds of different kinds of restaurants.

Classical music’s ability to translate emotional themes is fantastic.

I suppose I had my rock star fantasies while I was singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror, but I never really consciously said, ‘OK, this is what I’m going to do for a living and I’m going to be Weird Al.’

And to be honest, it’s all about the sound, the noise, the rattle and hum. Who wouldn’t want to make a fantastic noise with drums and cymbals?!

My mum had a cousin that had played when he was younger.

I don’t believe in superheroes but I love Batman movies. There’s a part of every person that is entertained by the idealistic, the fantastic.

I’m a farmer’s market girl, so if you go and get beautiful, fresh fruit, that’s local, and it hasn’t been frozen yet, it’s pretty fantastic.

I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistake.