I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.
I don’t believe in an interventionist God.
When I’m singing ‘Deanna,’ for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.
I’m a believer. I don’t go to church. I don’t belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn’t write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.
I’ve always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.
Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There’s immense happiness that can come from working towards that.
Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.
I’m not in the business of telling people what to do. I’m much more in the business of describing things, situations and stuff like that and leaving them out there, and you can make up your minds about them.
This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride – he’s my dad – and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go.
There are times when I think I can sing it better, but usually I find that I can’t.
Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There’s a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.
And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me.
Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.
I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone’s little finger and break it in three places.
You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.
I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I’m quite happy about to be honest.
Inspiration is a word used by people who aren’t really doing anything. I go into my office every day that I’m in Brighton and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant.
I’ve got some words of wisdom.
Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built out of longing great wonders have been willed they’re only little tears darling let them spill and lay your head upon my shoulder.
Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied.