Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there?

It's good to have to put yourself in someone else's skin. It's all-consuming.

You're either too fat or too thin. You just can't win.

You're only as good as your last record and you could get dropped.

I would have been happy to have waited till I was in my mid- to late-30s before I got married, but you don't choose when these things happen, and when they do, there's no doubt in your mind.

I'm a perfectionist.

The success of Torn was a bit too much for me. I took a year off and was still scared to start the second album.

Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there?

I am such a bad liar. I would like to lie, though.

I've done a lot of partying in my time because I didn't want to go home and I didn't know what to do.

I'm such a chameleon. I never get bored.

It's much easier to write when you're sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from.

I like the idea of growing old gracefully and full of wrinkles... like Audrey Hepburn.

Enjoy every moment: you never know when things might change.

I know my music probably isn't going to matter to the public after I die, but that doesn't mean I don't have something to offer.

I like singer-songwriters, and I find sad songs comforting rather than depressing. It makes you realise you're not alone in the world.

I seem to have very polite fans, not fanatical ones.

I started dancing when I was three, Scottish dancing.

I wasn't born with a natural talent for songwriting.

I worry unnecessarily.

I'm not a nightclub person, but you need to have a social life sometimes.

I'm quite confident with the way that I look but you find something else to focus on don't you if, I mean I, I have body issues that's my thing so you find something to focus on when you're a perfectionist, I think.

It's not very often that I like new bands.

My mum said I told her I wanted to be a hairdresser during the week and a star on the weekend and that was when I was really young.

There are artists who think they have to be on top all the time. I think that would be exhausting.

There is no kind way to rip the skin off animals' backs. Anyone who wears any fur shares the blame for the torture and gruesome deaths of millions of animals each year.

You feel this pressure that people will take you more seriously if you play guitar, but I've decided I'm a singer and that's enough.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

When I heard his first songs, Dylan was answering certain questions that I had all my life been asking myself.

The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

All my songs are where I am.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

We would turn everything into songs in those days.

Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

I had deeper, more reflective songs on the first album.

I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible.

The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true.

I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.