In my whole life, I've worn black tie three times. I can't tie the knot myself. Once, at the premiere of the opera, I got to La Scala before Domenico, and I was hiding in the corner until he arrived, and I said, 'Quick, you have to tie my tie, please!' Otherwise, I'll wear a tuxedo jacket with jeans and my bling-bling cross.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
I remembered the times I'd second-guessed myself or questioned my own ability. The times when a little voice in my head worried that I didn't have the know-how or the experience to reach for an exciting opportunity.
I'm terrible with decisions. And I can't make myself do something I don't like. I can't knuckle under.
I was at a party in Alexandra Palace tobogganing on the ski slope, got whiplashed at 40mph, put my hands out to balance myself, and three fingers got caught in the artificial snow. I broke four knuckles. I have not drummed since.
I grew up dying my hair with Kool Aid. I used to switch my hair up every day just to make myself look and feel good.
The Kurdish problem is not only the problem of one part of my nation: it is a problem of every one of us, including myself.
Since retiring, there's only been one time I actually dreamed about wrestling. In my dream, I was wrestling against Kurt Angle. I had him clamped in a headlock. I was breathing hard, and I remember telling myself, 'This is only a dream. It's not real.' But the longer I held Kurt in a headlock, I started to believe it was real.
I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive.
My dad was a laborer. And he used to get up at 5:30 every morning. He worked for 50 years of his life, in all weathers for, by showbiz standards, petty cash. I remind myself of that when I feel a little bit spoiled or hard done by.
I class myself as a manual laborer.
I do seem to try to make things harder and harder for myself. In some perverse way, obstacles interest me and I'm drawn to projects that end up being incredibly laborious.
The best recommendation I can have is my own talents, and the fruits of my own labors, and what others will not do for me, I will try and do for myself.
I was a Labour Party man but I found myself to the left of the Labour party in Nelson, militant as that was. I came to London and in a few months I was a Trotskyist.
I don't see myself as any different from all the other Filipinos who have gone abroad looking for opportunity, to be a nurse, a labourer, a maid or a prostitute.
My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?
I think when I started to get in shape and spend time at the gym, I could be better to other people and be better to myself and get back to loving fashion and experience it myself. I started to wear kilts and lace dresses.
I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.
In London the day after Christmas (Boxing Day), it began to snow: my first snow in England. For five years, I had been tactfully asking, 'Do you ever have snow at all?' as I steeled myself to the six months of wet, tepid gray that make up an English winter. 'Ooo, I do remember snow,' was the usual reply, 'when I were a lad.'
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.
