Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work I really wanted more than anything else to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.

If you start by promising what you don't even have yet you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

Men and women should stay apart till their hearts grow gentle towards one another again.

Now the first step has to be taken the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still we will have no chance of escaping the violence.

And trust yes which is important but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people and with that desire to get things as good as possible I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.

O my brethren my heart is enlarge towards you. I trust I feel something of that hidden but powerful presence of Christ whilst I am preaching to you.

Shall we ever see the 10 million things of the universe simultaneously in order to be the all? I am convinced that to live is to travel towards the world's end.

The second and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic a scholar a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic.