I was very, very lucky to spend my youth during the '60s

I was raised Church of England but I love the Buddhist philosophy, it's very powerful, non-violent.

Who wants to be a 40-year-old rock and roller? You cannot live in the past.

To think I thought you could lose your place in history.

After years of doing composition, the risk is always that you might start to repeat and be cliche. Every time, I try find a way to be reborn again as an artist. Its not easy to reinvent yourself every time, as it takes a lot of creative energy, but I am happy to do it.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.

I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table.