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" If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer. "

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" It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be. "

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" I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn't have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that - except I couldn't afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering. "

" 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. "

" I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players. "

" I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking. "

" As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself. "

" I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original. "

" The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking. "

" I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on. "

" What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That's what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people. "

" 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 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. "

" There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means. "

" And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan. "

" I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance. "

" Age doesn't bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It's the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am. "

" I'm wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It's a real enjoyment. "

" But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people. "

" It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be. "

" I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers. "

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" I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth. "