Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God
Dancing is an important function of music, but so is crying.
The last verse [In My Secret Life] completely got to me, about how we all have great ideals but in reality we end up conforming, following everyone else. We want to be stronger so we lead that life inside, thinking of ourselves as these great brave souls. I literally thought when I was 15 that I was a musical genius and I could change the world, but in fact you're not and you can't and you don't, and that realisation is almost heartbreaking.
I do know that there are some things that exist in this world that you just can't prove. That could be the case with God or whoever might be up there, but I don't follow any one religion.
The second album was like being on a completely different planet compared to when we were making the first album. . . . Even though it was the same musicians, the same artist, the same studio, the same producer, - it felt like a completely different piece of a puzzle.
The Brits was an amazing place to get a broad musical education. But I never really thought I was going to be a singer because there was always someone better than me in my class.
I've never had paparazzi follow me and I rarely get recognised. I dress like a tramp when I'm not working. My hairdresser calls me the Romanian window cleaner. That's just the way I am.
Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own.
The definition of courage is going from defeat to defeat with enthusiasm.
Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
One day I visited a guy who had made a fortune as a broker. He was sitting in his office with his computer. I hire people from here and make deals from this room, he told me. Then he took me to the trading room. Nobody was talking to anybody else, the place was silent as a tomb, they were all sitting there watching their terminals - a great word, terminal. I tell you, it scares the crap out of me.