"I always go back to Death on the Stairs, the Libertines song. I love that tune. It’s the story it tells, it takes me to a place so far away and yet so familiar. It’s really hard though - I don’t believe in first or best or worse, I'm into liberty and verse - as Pete once sang [in a demo for The Libertines’ The Man Who Would be King]. It’s like going through your kids and picking your favourite child"

"I read the great American “East of Eden,” strangely enough, during my first rail trip across Europe. After I completed each chapter I would rip the pages in a chunk from my paper back and leave them in whatever train car I was departing to lighten my load. There was something very comforting having something so American with me while being so far from home. The beauty of Steinbeck's language stays with you for years if not decades."

"One of my favorite books, which I read when I was about twelve or fourteen, was Alfred Russel Wallace’s travels in the Far East in search of the birds of paradise. I thought he was a marvelous man and full of insight and compassion for the people he met. He was entirely by himself, getting on for eight years wandering around the islands of East Melanesia, western New Guinea and Borneo. He writes brilliantly and says marvelous things."