I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

I just can't seem to write songs about peace and love. Yeah right how do you get that?

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

As a young boy I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

As for goals I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer or a wife and a lover? With kids your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer by nature.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy wasteful blundering low and horribly cruel work of nature!

I've only been to Ireland once and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head almost like music and that if I were a songwriter I would be very inspired.

I write music with an exclamation point!

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

The problem for me still today is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

I write the vocals last because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

I write the music produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

I think the world is ready for some rock 'n' roll. Some real time guys that play their own instruments write their own songs and sing the music and have a good time doing it.

Beethoven can write music thank God but he can do nothing else on earth.

I don't really have a style icon but I really admire the way people dress like Gaga Rihanna and Gwen Stefani. It's good to be inspired by singers who write music and dress incredibly - rather than models and people in the fashion industry who dress immaculately anyway because it's their style.

Since I met Starsmith my producer I really feel like I'm making music because we write it together and produce it together. I've got a proper involvement in the end product as opposed to just writing a song and finding someone else to produce it.

Oh I will always be honest with my music. The records are black boxes for me. Like if you want to know who I am my views my perspective things I love things I hate my convictions my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.