"This is proof that despite the difficulties it is possible to make a wonderful film from a wonderful but very long book, in this case Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, which describes the dissolution of the great Sicilian ruling families during the 1860s. Set in the magnificent and sometimes crumbling palaces of Palermo and the arid Sicilian summer countryside, the film shows us the privileged but largely pointless lifestyle of the ruling elite, threatened by political change and their own inertia. One shot in the film encapsulates the message: when the central family arrives at their country estate exhausted from the grueling journey there, they enter the local church and sit in their family pew, along the length of the nave. The camera tracks across their faces, exhausted and gray with dust. The reference is unmistakable; they resemble those mummified bodies held in catacombs under the Capuchin monastery of Palermo, held upright in endless rows, many still in their nineteenth-, even eighteenth-century clothes, rotting and collapsing, covered in the dust of centuries. It is a beautiful example of how much can be said in a single camera shot when used by a master."

"The first interview we did was with The Face, and we were all sitting in a room and it wasn’t going too well. When it came out they must have thought we were the most awkward bastards. Will wasn’t helping much – he was in bed with a torch under the sheets, presumably so he could see his knob. I was asked my influences and I said Lou and Bowie, and I said I loved Abba. The others afterwards said they wished I hadn’t have mentioned Abba, but I didn’t say it for effect, they were this side thing that helped. Every time a song came out it was like, ""fucking hell""! Just utterly brilliant, great melodies, and Agnetha, the best female voice of all time – and the other one wasn’t bad either. It was just so cute – I hate that word – some of the awkward lyrics, but over time was it charm, or just genius lyrics. The relationship songs are just brilliant – I wish I’d have written them. ‘When I Kissed The Teacher’ – you can’t get away with that now, what with the Catholic Church and Jimmy Savile having destroyed all the foundations of decency."

"Iggy reminds me a lot of me. And it's all in that name; it's all in the title of that album. It’s raw power, you know? I like the funk that David Bowie was able to get behind Iggy. Believe it or not, I first saw an image of Iggy Pop at church, and they were talking about secret messages and backward masking - and they had [a picture of] Iggy Pop looking crazy. I didn't get into it until later, but I think how I was introduced to it was 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'. And what I like about Iggy is it's just genuine raunch. And the album seems like it’s all done in one take. 'Let's do that one, leave it, just try something else'. With his energy on stage, it seems as if the studio was just destroyed after that album - or at least you'd like to believe that. I just read an interview with him in which he said he wrote a lot of it in Hyde Park sitting under a tree wearing pyjama's too, which gave it a cool twist as well. I just love 'Search And Destroy' and 'I Need Somebody' as well."

"As far as the horror genre, I think The Exorcist is the scariest movie of all time. It’s like head and shoulders above… there’s nothing more terrifying, or deeply sinister than that. When I saw The Exorcist, at that time when I was a kid, I may have slept with the light on. I can’t remember the exact time [I saw it], but I remember being literally knocked back. You have the pure theological question about, you know, “What is the role of evil and what is the nature of evil and what is its function?” And I think in The Exorcist the point is, the reason it’s here is to try and make us give up hope, and find the courage to not give up hope. Evil wants to so demoralize you that you abandon all hope; it’s only human beings’ capacity to love and to fight back. But that’s the role of evil: To challenge, and to make you choose. And growing up as a Catholic, too, I was immersed in the theology and doctrine of the church, so that movie was a serious, serious f-cking movie."

"The rawness is what perked me up when I heard this first - and I've never forgotten that. You know, I've gotten a lot of her albums since, but that first one... There's an American singer called Nancy Wilson and the tone of their voices is very similar. When they first played it, I was driving back down to London from the north of England - it came on the radio and I thought, 'Thank God, Nancy Wilson has gone back to church.' You know what I mean, Nancy Wilson has got more soul, because the tones of their voices are very similar. But then they said 'this new singer, Aretha Franklin...' so I went out and bought the record in London. Meeting her for the first time [Franklin appeared on This Is Tom Jones], Aretha was very quiet - unbelievably quiet. I mean you'd go 'Hello' and she'd say 'Hello.' 'How are you?' 'Fine thank you.' 'Great!' And that's it. And when we were doing the rehearsal, and she'd open her mouth to sing, the volume that came from this woman - how can a girl who's so shy and quiet - all of a sudden BOOM - burst?"