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

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" 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. "

" Songs are more powerful than books. "

" 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. "

" Living a very long time would be a very scary thing. "

" Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends. "

" 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. "

" People tend to repeat the same quotes at me that I said when I was 23. And of course, you say things then, and sometimes they're ill-advised. "

" 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. "

" Life for me is about movement. "

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

" There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie. "

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

" Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises. "

" My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials. "

" 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. "

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

" My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. "

" 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. "

" Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things. "

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

" I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale. "

" These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas. "