What I'm resistant to is the 'Walk the Line' biopic, where you have this redemptive life done in two hours. It just doesn't wash with me. I've been there and things don't work out that way.

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan.

I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I'm quite happy about to be honest.

My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.

And that makes him wish all over again that his dad would stop crying, so he can have a turn.

You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.

Death looms large I guess because it should. It's the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It's the only thing we've really got, and I don't mean to sound bleak about this, but it's a unifying factor amongst us all.

I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become.

The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart -- those very straight, direct songs that make rock and roll music so wonderful.

I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.

I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.

You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.

I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don't have that capacity. They're locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

No wonder sorrow doesn't smile much. No wonder sadness is so sad.

I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.

The guitar is something you kind of embrace, and the piano is something you kind of -- when you play it, you sort of push it away. It feels very different.