Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it’s all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was...

There’s no point in lying saying I am doing really, really well because I’m not; I’m cult level.

I’ve been getting pretty focused about that recently, and even considered doing a masters degree to polish up the craft. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I seem to have found people online who are...

I love my mother dearly, but it wouldn’t be suitable for me to live with her all the time.

I don’t really think of Dire Straits as a sound, you know. It. just depends on the song, and the stuff we’re doing is so varied.

I’ll probably make loads of plans, and then just sit around on my bottom all day long and do nothing.

It’s sort of a feeling of power onstage. It’s really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have...

Everything I do is for the pleasure of Allah.

I always say that I am very proud of the work that I did with the Rolling Stones and that I am also proud of what I have done with the Rhythm Kings.

You know, that’s it, there’s no turning back because what it’s made of is so fine. It’s like crystal, you know, it’s like the purest crystal.

Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I’ve always felt about that decision – it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting...

My mother had all these scrap books she kept and the reviews, I was also fortunate to have a list of every gig I’ve ever played in my life.

Well, I was born in Scotland and spent the first six years of my life there. Then I went to Newcastle-On-Tyne in northeast England, close to Scotland.

There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.

Salman Rushdie, indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death.

I think anyone would want to see their favorite band in a small club over a large stadium.

A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.

But reality television is here to stay.

Of course, I want to sell this record – there’s no point making it otherwise.

I haven’t shaved my private parts, but I dyed them once for a laugh! They looked more ginger, though!

What can you do? You’ve gotta move on.

I didn’t actually realise what apartheid meant. I’m probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.

I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.

I became alienated from this religious upbringing, and started making music. I wanted to be a big star. All those things I saw in the films and on the media took hold of me, and...

I am much more my own man than I was when I was with the Stones.

Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn’t a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that’ll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight....

I’d been a Bowie fan before punk and used to get no end of trouble. I was always getting knocked about and having to run up the street, getting chased by people. It was horrible.

If you feel driven and compelled to make your work and to be fiercely original and have something unique to say, in a compelling way, then chances are the helpers will be there for you...

I remember that I used to mix with my friends who had brothers and sisters. I was an only child.

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I’d also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn’t have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow...

In a way it costs thousands dollars before you could actually go out to put the show on because you’ll need equipments, all the lights you know, and that’s more just going out and playing...

No, I’ve never thought that I was gay. And that’s not something you think. It’s something you know.

Music is part of God’s universe.

You never know what your next dig is going to find.

The difference with me is that I did inhale.

I left school at 17 and was a star by the time I was 18 – in certain parts of the world anyway.

I was brought up with psychics and tarot cards. My mum was always told I was going to be in a boy band and be famous as a singer.

My sons are into German music, but they are into all kinds of music.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I’ve always rebelled against theory.

We’ve always decided ourselves what we wanted to put out as our singles and that sort of things.

I suppose that the media and their portrayal of Islam and the almost tribal separations and divisions of the Muslims are the greatest issues confronting Muslims in the United Kingdom.

I’m always shy in front of an audience, so I’m always at the back, in the shadows, just doing it. I don’t like the front, the adulation.

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they’re far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they’re out of my league.

Nothing is a career move. Everything I’ve done this year has so not been a career move.

With pop stars or film stars, we become the object of people’s self-definition, as well as the object of sexual definition.

I’d go out with Duncan if I was a girl.

What we’re doing is a retrospective, a refined look at how far we’ve come in what’s known as progressive music and investigate and explore that.

I don’t want to be nasty but let’s just say Robbie Williams is no Freddie Mercury.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you.