When I was 9 years old, I wanted to be the baritone sax player in the Little Richard band.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

I'm really quite bipolar, and the depressed times, when everything felt like night, sometimes you get to such a low point that you physically beat at it until it bleeds -- as you would say -- bleeds till sunshine.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home -- I think in those days we called them arguments -- about who was right and who was wrong.

You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

If I put faith in medication, if I can smile a crooked smile, if I can talk on television, if I can walk an empty mile.

Fame, what you like is in the Limo. Fame, what you get is no tomorrow.

You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn't it popular?

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.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

I was always accused of being cold and unfeeling. It was because I was intimidated about touching people.

Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.

I think everything that I learned about stagecraft and carrying through -- creating a through point for a theatrical device.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.