“If You can play Your stuff in a pub, then You´re a good band.”

Hamburg totally wrecked us. I remember getting home to England and my dad thought I was half-dead. I looked like a skeleton, I hadn’t noticed the change, I’d been having such a ball!

I think the French girls are fabulous.

Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.

I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.

It’s a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.

But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important color in writing.

But you know, as a kid I would have thought of a vegetarian as a wimp.

I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.

I think the minute you’re full up and have had enough to eat, then that’s time to retire.

Lyricists play with words.

When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted to be was Elvis Presley.

I feel like the sixties is about to happen. It feels like a period in the future to me, rather than a period in the past.

I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.

If I were dead, I would be the last to know.

I just always enjoy it; if you really enjoy what you do, you don’t want to stop.

I took my brains out and stretched them on the rack, now I’m not too sure I’m gonna get them back.

I’m definitely musician and storyteller. But I always like to take an active role in things I care about socially and environmentally.

I’m in a position I never imagined I’d be in as a musician. Bob Dylan built an audience through recording and live shows. The opportunities for an artist today are totally different.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that’s the center of it, that is it. It’s almost like there’s something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you’re a songwriter that sings your material.

If I wasn’t a musician… I think I’d just be endlessly traveling.

As a musician or a performer, you’re meant to know what you’re about, but it’s ridiculous that someone 14 would have any idea of what they’re about.

I wouldn’t buy somebody’s album on a dare if they called him a musician’s musician. I don’t write to be a writer’s writer. I don’t want to be like the little-magazine writer.

There’re lots of musicians in my family, too. My mother sings incredibly well. I’ve got to make a record with my mother’s voice on it. She sings a lyric soprano. We do the opposite. I’m a baritone. She’s a star singer in her church. She always does her solo.

My father was a psychiatrist and a social worker but he was a very talented painter and musician and writer on the side.