"I’ve always been an old soul. I started drinking when I was very young. I got into opera when I was 13. I sought out older musicians. It’s as if I have always been trying to accelerate my life. It’s not that I found people my own age unstimulating. There was just something about always being the youngest kid in the room when I was growing up."

“Grief is unexplainable. My mother has now been dead for 10 years. I only put my grief for her on the shelf when about five years had gone by. I felt as if I’d passed my exams. I had grieved enough, it was time to live again. And it felt like that for the next five years. But this Christmas I got the worst whiplash. It all came back out. I’m doing better now, but it was horrific. Leonard Cohen warned me it would be hard. He told me that, despite his mother having passed away many years previously, in his late 70s she was almost more present than ever.”

“Rufus might sing with that beautiful voice, and the entire world seems to melt and stop; but it's his hair, after all, that I'm jealous of.”

“'Evil Angel' is an interesting song. It's actually to do with a journalist who, uh... I was in France at the time and quite delicate... and this guy basically seduced me in Strasbourg... he gave me a tour of the town and it was very romantic, and we did actually make out in the middle of this town square... and then I went and did the show and I never heard from him again. And I just felt incredibly used. I think a lot of it has to do with, once you get into this business, you do have to become some kind of a machine. You do have to be heartless at times and be able to plough through certain situations. I don't want to totally become that person, but it's good that I'm thinking about it.”

“Rufus is extraordinary, so musically gifted in many diverse fields. He is a prince in shining armour, a true star in these days of dull and boring, pissy little pop stars.”

“Nothing eviscerates the ego like becoming a parent. For a pop star, that’s not the easiest thing. But it’s led to a complete realignment of priorities for me. Now what happens to my daughter is far more important than what happens to me. And these days it’s not even just my child who is more important than me – it’s all children.”

“He's got a phenomenal voice.”