My generation in the UK, they're very apathetic, a lot of them.

Music is politics - it always has been and it always will be.

I'm already 30! It doesn't really feel like a landmark. When I started out, my aim was to keep making records. Just because I've reached the 10th doesn't mean I'm going to rest on my laurels now!

One of the joys of writing music is making your own mark. Study other stuff, immerse yourself in music and then tell your own truth.

Sometimes you definitely need to just let go. You need to sort of forget everything.

It would be a horrible business, a horrible sort of culture if you didn't have the candy pop as well as the real hard-hitting stuff. And I love some pop music.

I think the US and the UK are gradually growing closer together in a lot of ways. They're inextricably linked.

I would always consider myself to be political with a small "p," although it makes me mad when people say politics should be kept out of music.

If you're a Brit you kinda get used to people being cold and aloof and just generally arrogant - particularly musicians. (Compared to Londoners New Yorkers are a walk in the park!)

I want to be accessible to a certain type of person who wants to walk around with their eyes open, or at least is open to the idea of change.

All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to

A divine great spirit put awe-words on my mind

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

Justice is too good for some people and not good enough for the rest.

Even more than feeling healthy, most people want to feel free and in control.

If you go to London now, not everything is beautiful, but it's amazingly better than it was. And the Thames is certainly a lot better: There are fish in the Thames.

Terrorism is you winning hearts and minds of people.

I like to do things that I develop from the ground up.

In actual fact, I have been an academic - a college and university teacher and scholar - for much of the last 45 years, and only rarely a writer.

And suddenly it didn't seem to matter any more, nothing would matter if she could turn over, turn over and see the stars, turn over and look once and die.