I always feel more comfortable in chaotic surroundings. I don't know why that is. I think order is dull. There is something about this kind of desire for order, particularly in Anglo Saxon cultures, that drive out this ability for the streets to beco...
The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the ...
I now know my right from my left and my up from my down. Unluckily, my terrible sense of direction remains. For me, to live in New York City is to never be able to meet someone on the northeast corner. It is to never ever make a smooth entrance, alwa...
I had two major activities as a child. I was trying to put on shows with kids in my street, or I was drawing. Actually, what I'm doing now is exactly what I was doing then. Either I'm drawing, or I'm gathering people for a common project. The only di...
What's an ambush interview? You walk up to a fellow who you want to talk to, and he hasn't been - he hadn't been willing to talk to you before. You've sent him letters, and you've tried to talk to him on the phone. So you walk up to him on the street...
I try to take a weekly digital Sabbath, batch my emails so I deal with them a few times a day rather than constantly, and increasingly give myself permission to ignore unsolicited communiques. I try, too, to give others more slack. The respond-now cu...
It's always on everyone's list, like, 'What's New Orleans like?' I think people have a pre-conceived idea, like it's just Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. But really, there's so much culture, the music's great, the food's great. It's not good for the w...
My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl's...
I shouldn't have to play live just because I've made a record. I get lots of letters 'cos I'm not into the street credibility thing. I don't like that whole thing at all, I've always thought of it as a very glamorous business, the whole thing about p...
My dad came over from Ireland when he was 13 and lived on the streets, working on building sites, and has just retired from his job delivering furniture for John Lewis. My mum has had the same job for 30 years as a sales assistant at Marks and Spence...
I have always been a fan of the horror genre, since I was five or six years old, watching movies like 'Friday the 13th,' 'Pyscho' and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street.' Even though 'Death Valley' is comedic, it still has some of that horror feel as well. I...
Life isn't about the final moments, it's about the journey, it's about process. What makes 'Rocky' work as a movie is seeing him working his way up from the streets to the arena and the fight of his life. You could just show that fight, and it would ...
I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is ...
A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur asked me a question sometime ago, he said, 'When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?' I think it's a great question. I'll tell you, in my life I've never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, beca...
My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than...
I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really d...
My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it kee...
My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of that port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughterhouse at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief dist...
i can not go through the ocean. i can not drive the streets at night. i can not wake up in the morning without you on my mind. and so your gone and im haunted i bet you are just fine. did i make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life.
From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The volcanic plug might be black Plasticine, the castle balanced solidly atop it a skewed rendition of crenellated build...
Cities on the ocean have a choice whether to turn their faces or their backs to the water, lining the shore either with pretty hotels and rich homes or dim warehouses, narrow streets, and greasy piers. All prairie towns turn away from the prairie, ho...
