“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.”

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

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.

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.

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.

We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you’re meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

The Brady ‘Campaign Against Illegal Guns’ is yet another crusade whose ultimate goal is to trample the Second Amendment into dust.

People have a right to be nervous and fearful. They heard what Trump said during the campaign and are wondering if he`ll follow through on his promises.

During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.

Comedy to the Senate? Well, there certainly hasn’t been a satirist or a political satirist who’s done that. So, that really was uncharted territory during the campaign.

There’s going to have to be investigations, and an independent investigation, into the Trump campaign and the Trump administration’s relationship to Russia.

When the president during the campaign said he was against nation building,

The Freedom of Information Act doesn’t apply to Silicon Valley. And you can’t impeach Google if it breaks its ‘Don’t be evil’ campaign pledge.

What you see on the campaign trail is me. It’s easy being me.