I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that's OK, too. It's whatever suits you.
I'm very wary of fawning too much over heroes. There's an old adage that heroes are best kept at arm's length, and in a few instances in my life, that's been true.
Old age is just a record of one's whole life.
It's interesting when you're old enough to take a new, objective approach looking at your parents, frame them in a way where you are actually taking yourself out of the equation and just look at the things that are true about their life.
The sky is always there for me, while my life has been going through many, many changes. When I look up the sky, it gives me a nice feeling, like looking at an old friend.
What little success I may have won in life I attribute to the loyalty I had for a dear old friend who was my first steel master, whom you perhaps have never heard of: Captain Bill Jones.
Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.
You don't have to have anything in common with people you've known since you were five. With old friends, you've got your whole life in common.
I never feel lonely if I've got a book - they're like old friends. Even if you're not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they're part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.
If you're old enough to have a job and to have a life, you use Facebook exactly as advertised, you look up old friends.
I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been.
In real life, it's war, and war's not entertainment. War is 'old men lying and young men dying' kind of deal. That's a saying; I didn't make that up.
To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.
My favorite thing is a brand-new project from scratch because you really never know how they're going to come to life. Going back for the third and fourth time to old ones is very gratifying, but it's not my favorite use of my creativity.
When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.
I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
The elder who is eliminating what time has done to the face, what life has done to the face, is making a statement for others to see: This is the way to be a good old person - it is to defeat this body that is doing things to you. Because you haven't changed. Your body's changing.
I maintain that when I finally retire from my career in music, I will go and live back in Wales - when I am an old person, if I live to be an old person. The water I miss, and the air, there's something different about it. And I miss the simple life.
I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.
I know that everyone has their own ideas about what the good life is, and hip hop has especially strong ideas about it. It's been the same old thing for years and years: a bunch of females around you, nice cars and money. I wanted people to know what the good life actually is and challenge a lot of the lies that we're told.
