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" I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow. "

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" Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. "

" And I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it. "

" You do have to be a bit careful with your voice. It is an instrument. "

" Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me. "

" I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why. "

" I've worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic. "

" Women hear rhythm differently than men. "

" I've had an unusual life. A life far removed from most people's experience. "

" Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music. "

" It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down. "

" You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights. "

" I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music. "

" I find humming is very useful. "

" We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels. "

" Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that. "

" I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong. "

" And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music. "

" You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity. "

" But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve. "

" I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me. "

" I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself. "

" Songs are more powerful than books. "

" I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time. "

" Life for me is about movement. "

" Well, I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you. "

" Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love. "

" People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard. "

" Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back. "

" And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even. "

" The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music. "