David Bowie

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

Nothing prepared me for your smile

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

I'm an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one's direction seconds after its birth.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I'm from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.

I've come to the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time...

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.

I'm wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It's a real enjoyment.

There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.

Now I realize that from '72 through to about '76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn't have been more rock star.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Age doesn't bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It's the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don't think I'm camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage.

I couldn't have written things like 'Low' and 'Heroes,' those particular albums, if it hadn't have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.