I started writing songs for youth theater and stuff, and so it's really writing music for the stage that started me out, but then I eventually went to music college and did a two-year course in contemporary music and then just played in endless bands, cover bands, jazz bands.

In particular, Stewart Lee and Tony Law, people who could have been really critical, were really supportive of me, and I'll never forget that, and I want to be that person, so you have to work really hard to repress your natural jealousies and be one of those people.

I've stopped asking for criticism, even from friends, because I don't think anyone knows my little world of mega-thorough critical thinking/musical comic rambling better than I do.

My whole mission is to have a long, interesting career, not a short spiky one.

The thing about being a university teacher is that you're fairly tolerant about young people saying things they shouldn't have said.

Happiness: a way station between too little and too much.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

I was born on the 24th of September 1755 in the county of Fauquier, at that time one of the frontier counties of Virginia. My father possessed scarcely any fortune and had received a very limited education - but was a man to whom nature had been bountiful, and who had assiduously improved her gifts.