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.

Please write music like Wagner only louder.

My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.

I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually ultimately I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.

I write music every day.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song if I choose to not look inside myself to write music I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.

A musician must make music an artist must paint a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me that editing process feels like a form of play like a puzzle that needs solving and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

The moving finger writes and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit can cancel half a line of it.

I'm intrigued by films that have a singular vision behind them. A lot of studio movies have ten writers by the time they're done. You have a movie testing 200 times making adjustments according to various people's opinions. It's difficult to have an undistilled vision.

I've never written a movie I'm not in the movie business. I go out to L.A. and I'm like everyone else wandering around in a daze hoping I see movie stars. I write the novels that the movies are based on and that feels like enough of a job for me.

I think it would be fun to write about movies again.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.