"If I had to have one favorite movie that I’ve seen a hundred times, it’s probably that. I’m not really sure why I first liked it; I must have been fourteen or something like that when I first saw it. It’s always meant so much to me. Peter Riegert plays a maybe 40-year-old businessman who’s in the oil business and is called and sent up to the coast of Scotland to look into buying some land where they found some oil and he has to negotiate with the local village. [He] thinks it’s going to be a very tough thing to sort of uproot all these people, [and] the comedy is that they’re only too happy to sell out. They’re just trying to negotiate the price up as much as possible. It unfolds at its own pace, and he falls in love with this town and with the sea and cares less and less about the deal. He more and more wants to trade places with the local innkeeper and move to this town and stay there. A beautifully made film and I feel like there was a rash of movies right afterward that sort of tried to capture what he achieved. These people sort of coming to some little town and being transformed. It’s so touching and so funny and warm, and has so many moments of grief and elegance and delicacy. It’s got beautiful music by Mark Knopfler. That might have been the first movie that I felt that strongly about at that sort of formative time. But it’s very strange to feel like that’s the movie, you know? It doesn’t have some young protagonist. [But] from then on I was obsessed with Scotland and Ireland. Wanting desperately to go up there, and then when I did, it was very similar to that feeling. I went [on] a Bill Forsyth binge and watched all of his movies, like Gregory’s Two Girls, and Comfort and Joy, and Breaking In, even, with Burt Reynolds of all people. I wish he were still making movies."

"She's one of my all-time favourite artists, all-time favourite spirits and one of my all-time favourite voices. I think she's incredibly fragile and I continue to worry for her because I don't think she's being very well taken care of as an artist. There's certain artists need everybody's help to continue to be creative and she's one of them. 

 I'm a tank – I can take care of myself and I don't need anybody's help, but Sinéad O'Connor is a jewel and has a voice like no other – one of the great voices of this century. I worry that we're going to lose her. She has mental health problems and has spoken very openly about them and is really brave and courageous for doing so. She's a great rebellious spirit who was punished for being a rebel in ways that we can barely imagine or conceive of. I have nothing but great admiration for her. 

 She has this extraordinary voice that just does things to my insides. She's a complete iconic gem and touches me in ways that so few can; she's made so many beautiful records. I wish I could sort of throw myself at her feet, because I feel like she finds love, I think, difficult to absorb, and yet she's so deserving of it. This voice comes, again, from a different universe. Its spectacular ability to both emote and communicate. I'm so grateful to her for this record; I just love it and I love hearing her sing so much. She's one of my touchstones, someone I always can rely on to bring magic. 
 When greats die, like when David Bowie died, there's this great outpouring of grief as I know there will be if and when, god forbid, we lose, finally, an artist like Sinéad O'Connor. Yet she's alive now and is capable of producing these spectacular pieces of work, and yet she's treated so brutally by the music industry – an industry who would rather laude in applause an uncreative, stage-schooled kid who's got a great voice but no soul. They'll get more excited about that than they will the possibility of signing a great like Sinéad O'Connor. And therein lies the ludicrousness of the modern music business."