“I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.”

Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.

Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means.

Secret thinker sometimes listening aloud.

The only art I’ll ever study is stuff I can steal from.

I hate albums that are really happy. When I am really happy, I don’t like to hear happy albums, and when I am really sad I don’t wanna hear happy albums… and I tend to gravitate towards the lonely and isolated anyway when I write.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is.

I’ll place my love beneath the stars.

I find it easier to write in these little vignettes; if I try to get any more heavy, I find myself out of my league.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

I’m not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.

I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we’ve made of them…The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey.

I’m regarded quite asexually by a lot of people. And the people that understand me the best are nearer to what I understand about me.