"Stuff that's hidden and murky and ambiguous is scary because you don't know what it does."

"So we are pretty convinced we don't want to play huge stadiums unless we can play them well."

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part."

"I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully."

"Salman Rushdie, indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death."

"When I was on a major label I felt obliged to say yes to every interview, tour and whatever else. The label is always telling you, 'This ain't going to last,' so I worked myself half to death. I learnt from that and I like to pace myself now."

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable."

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens."