An uncle of mine emigrated to Canada and couldn’t take his guitar with him. When I found it in the attic, I’d found a friend for life.
I always stayed fit because I’m a performer, and all of those things help me to perform.
I can’t fly a flag for monogamy or whatever the opposite is; it depends on the person and on the situation.
I can’t imagine life without working. I think one of my anxieties is the idea of doing nothing terrifies me. I love the feeling of forward momentum. It’s become an addiction.
I can’t really change my life to accommodate people who are jealous. I don’t see why I should.
I come from a family of losers, and I’ve rejected my family as something I don’t want to be like.
I do my best work when I am in pain and turmoil.
I don’t like singing before noon.
I don’t need to manufacture trauma in my life to be creative. I have a big enough reservoir of sadness or emotional trauma to last me.
I don’t think pedestrian sex is very interesting… we like tawdry.
I don’t understand American football at all. It looks like all-in wrestling with crash helmets.
I exist in a state of almost perpetual hysteria.
I feel this music has nurtured me as I’ve been immersing myself in it. I’ve felt supported by it.
I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap.
I have a big problem with piped music. I like either silence or to listen to it properly.
I have been through various fitness regimes. I used to run about five miles a day and I did aerobics for a while.
I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.
I made two movies before The Police had a hit record: I did Quadrophenia and a film called Radio On.
I miss England. I miss the weather. I’ve spent moss of the last 25 years on tour. I’m ready to come home.
I realize that nothing’s as it seems.
I really wanted to work with David Lynch. I was a big fan of The Elephant Man and Eraserhead.
I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them.
I think I’m a focus for international attention.
I think love has something to do with allowing a person you claim to love to enter a larger arena than the one you create for them.
I think there’s room for both private exploration and group work in Yoga.
I think you can get the wrong impression about me from my work and think I’m always a bit down. I’m not that way at all. I’m fun-loving.
I try to give the media as many confusing images as I can to retain my freedom. What’s real is for my children and the people I live with.
I want to get old gracefully. I want to have good posture, I want to be healthy and be an example to my children.
I was brought up as a Catholic and went to church every week and took the sacraments. It never really touched the core of my being.
I was famous overnight. I went from nowhere to being really big.
I was recruited to teach 9-year-olds. I taught for two years.
I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
If you make your living writing, and you can’t write anything, it’s over. It’s very frightening.
I’m a travelling musician rather than a dad.
I’m not much of a family man. I’m just not that into it. I love kids, I adore them, but I don’t want to live my life for them.
I’m not speaking as someone who has reached satori or anything else. I’m a student.
I’m not usually happy, but at the same time happiness can be thought of as a kind of bovine state – cows are happy. I’m curious.
I’m very much afraid of being mad – that’s my one fear.
In pop music, there’s no such thing as composition. We collate from pre-existing tropes and then the originality comes in the interpretation.
Intellectually I’m probably a Republican.
It has very little to do with my work, but if your image is not sexy enough, people won’t listen. It’s part of the game.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile.
It’s never easy to write a song. It’s the most difficult thing I do.
I’ve never lost perspective on who I am. Well, maybe briefly, but generally I’m pretty balanced.
I’ve only paid lip service to a spiritual life.
I’ve spent a bit of time with the Prince of Wales, who I respect greatly. I’d give two cheers for the Monarchy.
Like Yoga, the spiritual life is actually very difficult.
Love is stronger than justice.
Melancholy is no bad thing.
My friends are Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, and we’re singing about mortality, getting older. It’s an interesting time.
One of the rewards of success is freedom, the ability to do whatever you like.
Peter Townshend shows us it’s all right to grow up. There is dignity after rock’n’roll.
Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I’d probably choose success.
That sense of failure, I don’t know where people put it who don’t write songs and aren’t able to emote physically. It must go somewhere.
The acceptance of death gives you more of a stake in life, in living life happily, as it should be lived. Living for the moment.
The deeper you get into Yoga you realize it is a spiritual practice. It’s a journey I’m making. I’m heading that way.
The logical process will often be the safe one. I tend, when I’m given that choice, to go the way that’s not safe.
The more irrational of us are worried about the millennium ending – as if a date would really matter.
The Super Bowl is Americana at its most kitsch and fun.
There’s no religion but sex and music.
When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.
Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.
Yoga is almost like music in a way; there’s no end to it.
