After my second-to-last record 'The Greatest' I had gone on tour for a while and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.

I think I would cope like anyone copes with any tragedy. I'm sure I would be very upset for a while and then there would come a point where I would either have to stay in this place of darkness and anger or I'd have to accept that it happened.

On banks I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.

Somebody hits me I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he hasn't eaten in a while.

Music makes your soul feel amazing while you're performing it.

At first I missed it but it was the amazing energy thing that happened during shows when a lot of people were like Yay Yay Yeah! I missed that for a while. But I don't miss the regular and the business side of that whole thing.

My dream career would be to be in things that have real heart and are telling real stories but while doing that you're getting really big laughs. I don't necessarily love the straight crazy comedies. 'Caddyshack' is amazing but there's not a lot of new 'Caddyshack's.

Raising a small child as a woman while travelling 10 months out of the year would I believe be something I would not be able or even want to do although with the amazing example of Leila I am no longer so sure.

Children are amazing and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale and of course I teach at Columbia NYU and that's nice and I love students but the most fun of all are the real little ones the young ones.

I've created directed and choreographed for Lady Gaga since the beginning so 'Born This Way ' this was musically such an amazing evolution and such a brilliant record. So when she played it for me it took me a while to find out the visual interpretation that I could give back to her.

While I'm not a celebrity it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.

I cannot stress enough that the answer to life's questions is often in people's faces. Try putting your iPhones down once in a while and look in people's faces. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry or nauseous or asleep.

It is quite amazing what I didn't feel after a while. I didn't really want to feel things.

Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.

At that time I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well if it was painful to read it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.

Thus the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

For a while I couldn't leave the house by myself. Even if I was just grocery shopping alone I'd get self-conscious.

For a while I felt very alone sort of out there in the world of comics especially here in the States.

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time which is not to say that one must live alone obsessively.

But no nation can base its survival and development on luck and prayers alone while its leadership fritters away every available opportunity for success and concrete achievement.

Life's an awfully lonesome affair. You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.

While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain guilt and loneliness of our present life.

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara California Sunday 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says.