My mother’s father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome.’ While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I’d be Horatius keeping the bridge.

One reason I quit doing interviews after years and years and years was because I was making things up.

Lincolnshire is the Idaho of England. You were either going to drive a tractor for the rest of your life or head for the city to work in a factory.

Don’t call my lyrics poetry. It’s an insult to real poets.

We may have limped onto Broadway as the underdogs, but underdogs bite back occasionally.