I'll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.
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.
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
I'm an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.
I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.
I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs - that's where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that's very cool.
With a suit, always wear big British shoes, the ones with large welts. There's nothing worse than dainty little Italian jobs at the end of the leg line.
I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me.
I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me because it's not their profession to do that.
I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.
An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I'm from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.
I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.
Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.
I've always tended to write songs prolifically.
