I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.

'Man in the Air' was an experience in exercise.

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.

I'm one of the culprits who keeps turning stuff around, shaking up original tunes and trying to stand the canon on its ear. But sometimes, you just need to sing the song.

You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to.

You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.

I've got my roots in Northern Ireland - my biological father's side of the family were from Belfast.

The only regular exercise I do is playing my shows, which are basically two hours of aerobics.

Politics for me is when I feel a personal engagement between people: I don't trust politicians.

Basically, my mum and dad bought me a CD player for my 14th birthday. They didn't really listen to music at all, but my dad had a couple of tapes that he'd listen to, like Tom Lehrer. My dad was a physicist and Tom Lehrer was like this really weird Harvard class professor, who was really cool because he was also a satirist and pianist.

I've never considered myself a locked-down straight person. I've had relationships with girls.

Criticism only hurts when there's some truth in it.

I had a job for a year, working in a high-quality whiskey-and-wine shop.

I can play piano, classical flute, guitar, bass and I'm OK on drums.

I often talk too much and don't listen enough.

I believe that the Universe is like a single organism, and we are all little nerve endings feeding our experiences back into a whole.

I used to take it much more to heart. Now I realise that negativity has almost everything to do with the person delivering it and very little to do with you yourself.

My father had Parkinson's, though he actually died following a bicycle accident.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn't the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

It's a shame that when you've actually lived some life and have something to write about, they're saying you're too old to come out and play it.

I'm shocked at how much I can talk about myself.

Sales have never been a source of joy for me in terms of my music. It's really about who's turning up at your shows, what people are saying about it.

I write songs, I play a guitar and that's it.