The way people look at me these days - that's the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who've attained a certain position are human.

I am very glad there are quite a number of people born with a gift and a liking for all of this; like great chessplayers who play sixteen games at once blindfold and die quite soon of epilepsy. Serve them right! I hope the Mathematicians, however, are well rewarded. I promise never to blackleg their profession nor take the bread out of their mouths.

Real music lovers are actually my favourite kind of people because they like to know, rather than just be told what to think.

Black people still call me Prince. Sometimes I ask them, "Why do you call me Prince?" And people say, "Because you are a prince to us." Usually when they say that, you know my heart goes out and I have to say, "I don't mind your calling me that."

I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity... to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.

I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon. That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think.