I have no patience for anyone who thinks they've figured things out, no patience for people who think they're right at the expense of everyone else. The world is too connected and too complicated to conform to any of our rigid ideas of what it should be like.
I may be a lifelong 'downtowner,' but Central Park really is the most amazing and the most beautiful part of New York City.
Many of my friends back in New York and elsewhere have a glib or dismissive attitude toward Los Angeles. It's a place of strip malls and traffic and not much else, in their opinion.
If you're inclined to dismiss L.A. as a place of unrelenting vapidity and generic 1980s architecture, then you're doing yourself and L.A. a huge disservice, and you're just not looking hard enough.
Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.
I met Elton John at an Interview dinner, and we just sort of became friends. He's got such a wicked sense of humor.
When I was growing up, albums were my closest friends, as sad as that may sound - Joy Division's 'Closer,' or Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Heaven Up Here'... I had a more intimate relationship with those records than I did with most of the people in my life.
Whenever I've had success, I never learn from it. Success usually breeds a degree of hubris. When you fail, that's when you learn.