“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?”

Trust nothing but your own experience.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

There’s a thing that just as you go to sleep, if you keep your elbows elevated that you will never go below the dream stage. And I’ve used that quite a lot and it keeps me dreaming much longer than if I just relaxed.

If you come from art, you’ll always be art.

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.

Turn and face the strange.

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.

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.

Growing old is unavoidable, but never growing up is possible. I believe you can retain certain things from your childhood if you protect them – certain traits, certain places where you don’t let the world go.

There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.

I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.

I don’t know what the big deal is about old age. Old people who shine from the inside look 10 to 20 years younger.

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.

Look at the bright side no matter how old you are, you are younger than you’ll ever be again.

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance has helped to determine your path through life.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.