"I’ve started writing a lot of songs recently; I’ve always written but I put my writing on hiatus because Tim’s such a great songwriter for Keane and I think I felt a bit deflated by how good he was, but recently I’ve got back into it. Carole King, I don’t know why, but something about the way that she talks about her emotional world, I find really engaging. It’s romantic, in a way, in a broader sense, and just beautifully crafted. Every time I sit down and try and write a song, I have her somewhere in the back of my mind. The great songs have a real sense of precision, there’s no dead space, you know every bit’s there for a reason. I like 'So Far Away'; I grew up in a small town and I always found it annoying, even though I did this myself, that people would leave! Because they felt that’s what they had to do - I’m not annoyed with them, I’m annoyed that that’s the way of the world, you have to leave your roots. I suppose I did the same thing, it’s a necessity of modern society, but it frustrates me. I used to sit around thinking, "Where are all my old mates who used to live down the road?" And that song, its wistful longing for people to stay put in a world that’s growing so fast. It’s a timeless record"

"Man on Fire, I think what Tony Scott did was ahead of his time, revolutionary. I mean, as far as how he shot it and how he used and maximized his ability to shape a film with sound. He would loop in, like, tiger, animal noises with Lupita Ramos’ scream. He put in a foreshadowing scene, like when we first see Creasy in the cab with the beard, and he flashes to the end when he dies, and then he flashes back to the cab scene, and we didn’t even know. It took me like four times to realize, “Oh, that was at the end!” And just getting introduced to Mexico in that way, how he captured it. How he captured the performances of Christopher Walken and Mr. Washington. It was like an indie film, and then it turned into this beautiful action film in the same movie. To me it was the perfect film. It was the perfect balance of art and commerce. You could sell this thing, but again, like Dances with Wolves, he didn’t compromise anything for the sake of story. Again, how he used language, too., When they’re speaking Spanish, but how he kind of had it where you can read the subtitles — how he did that, and how he mixed sounds and mixed music. I think it’s a perfect film. I love that film. I really do."

"Somebody gave it to me in the late nineties, just on a blank cassette and then yep, I was completely dubious, because when people mention Miles Davis or jazz in general, I would just think of those crazy funk-jazz things they did in the seventies, and I didn't know he was capable of this incredible orchestral soundscape. It helps that he's reading from an already fantastic piece of music but what he did to it was astonishing again, so I love it. It's just the most evocative record. Recently I had the pleasure of a train journey from Bilbao to Madrid and I put that on my headphones and it was like, "oh yeah, everything is cool". Actually, it didn't [unveil new layers to the record], as I think it was really cool to experience it on the train going through Spain and yet I always think that music is so powerful that the images that you have in your head if you're listening to it in your bedroom are as powerful, if not more so, than if you were in some incredible vista. After that I went back and bought the early Blue Note records, which are generally brilliant. I'm not a real jazz aficionado and if I've put on an old jazz record, it's mostly about mood, because I can't really understand what's going on. Whereas with Sketches Of Spain, it seems more orchestral, where I can understand what's going on better."