“A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.”

I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

I don’t like to have everything all worked out in my head because there’s always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.

I think everybody has a painter inside of them somewhere.

I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true. It’s hard to say whether or not you’re a believer.

It’s obvious you shouldn’t steal, kill or be cruel.

I don’t want to do children’s music. I write kids songs, but the kids songs I write are for my kids – like when I’m putting them to bed.

I’m always looking to rock out. But it isn’t really about rocking out versus being mellow, in terms of your personal satisfaction. In the end, you just want to be good.

When I think about that I get stimulated and excited. It’s a feeling that you can’t label with words.

You think you’ve made something really great, but there’s a reason why it’s not resonating the way some previous work did. But it’s not that easy to just replicate.

If I have more creativity that I want to get out of me, I try to find other ways than pursuing solo records so much.

This is a particular thing, you know, catholic stories of martyrs who had their head removed and then continued to be miraculous in the last moments of their life.

That’s more important even then what their background is or what they’ve done before, how good they are, how new they are or whatever. All that stuff is really secondary to just getting along with the person.

You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual.

I don’t want to be flaky. I don’t want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.

Wise is the tongue, wet of perfect thought.

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.

There was a folk club there and a girl called Jill Doyle taught me the guitar, who happened to be Davey Graham’s sister. Davey Graham is one of my heroes and always has been.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I’d think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix…

I was acting with all my childhood heroes: Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, all of those amazing women.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

Physically, the Ventoux is dreadful. Bald, it’s the spirit of Dry: Its climate (it is much more an essence of climate than a geographic place) makes it a damned terrain, a testing place for heroes, something like a higher hell.

I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes.

My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.