“No one ever chats me up; I think they all think I’m taken. Either that or no one fancies me.”

Compared to a lot of artists, I’m usually quite covered up in videos and photo shoots.

Working with Terry Gilliam was magic – I’ve been watching his films since I was little.

I wish I was more stupid because I’m either completely ecstatic and joyous and absolutely high as a kite or I’m a bit morbid. There’s never anything in between.

I feel quite excited about the possibility of working on multiple albums. There’s something really iconic about having a catalog featuring a lot of albums, and I’d love to have that legacy.

I like not to feel that all my eggs are in one basket, or I get nervous.

Celebrity culture is an aspirational culture regardless of how much you don’t want it to be.

I don’t normally have time to read, so when I go away I like to take a few books.

I’m not one for sightseeing or going around the shops when I’m on holiday. I do enough shopping when I’m at home, and like to have a complete break when I’m away.

I believe in life you need to always ask for everything politely and nicely, and then if they say no you do what you wanted to do anyway

I’m really into food; it’s one of my favourite things – everything from potato waffles to lobster.

I don’t connect much with the present. I have more of an affinity for what came in the past.

You cannot schedule death.

It’s amazing living alone. I’m very lucky. It’s like a refuge.

I’m the type of person who, if somebody offers me a free meal, I get excited because you never know where your next free meal is going to come from.

If I go out with no make-up and a tracksuit on, nobody comes up to me. And if they do, I won’t do a photo because I wouldn’t want any photographic evidence.

I love interesting people with eccentric stories and outsiders of the world.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

Whether it was in a fight and how to react or whether it was in a stadium with screaming fans or whether I was in a fancy car or the best clothes ever, I always put myself somewhere.

I’ve been a lot of places, and my wife, Denise, she likes a lot of the fancy restaurants.

A nervous breakdown calling himself a magician, two coachloads of 70-year-old religious maniacs looking for a fight and a fancy-dress contest that nobody knew about.

The image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it’s not true – French food isn’t just rich. The word “healthy” doesn’t exist in French.

I still don’t like the word agnostic. It’s too fancy. I’m simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people.

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that’s the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment.

If you CAN’T then all the advertising, fancy packaging, sales promotion and public relations in the world won’t help you achieve your objective.