A few soundbites from an interview with Nick that was in the Haagsche Courant last tuesday. I've skipped all the bits that were in umpteen other interviews.

"There is some sort of myth that I stopped doing drugs 10 years ago. Well, that's not the case. I still do drugs. I just don't take drugs most of the time. My creativity does not depend on a needle sticking out of my arm."

"On my previous albums I created a parallel world with a morality of its own. Its own sense of good and evil in a rather old-testamentarian way. I wrote this album in London and that's where the songs take place. There, and in the country outside of London where quite a few things have happened to me. The Boatman's Call is about everyday human pain, I think. So no hysteria, bloodshed or melodramas this time."

"The songs document what has been going on in my life these last few years. I was in a few relationships with women. I had no idea how I got into these relationships and I did not know how to deal with them. Writing helps to get a grip on that situation. I no longer enjoy writing violent lyrics. As I get older I know better what I want to write about. Love, love, love. That's what it's all about."

"I don't think that God is here to serve us. It's the other way around. I don't like to admit it but I'm a religious person [he laughs]. I've been reading the Bible regularly now for 20 years and that's not because of the great stories or its style."

"For a long time I preferred the Old Testament with a cruel and jealous God that destroyed large numbers of people when it pleased him to do so. I could relate to that as I hated the world. But when you get older that hatred disappears. Now it's the suffering of Jesus that I'm fascinated by."

"When you have a baby you realize that you are not the grand final product of civilization, but that you're just one link in and endless chain. Life with my father was a nightmare but now I see that he loved me in his own way. He was a man with problems and I have similar ones. But at least I admit I have them. And I hope I don't burden my son with traumas."

"I see more beauty in life than I used to."

"I used to make records because I thought I was of no importance if I didn't. Now I write to understand what is happening around me, and what is happening to me. And that is something completely different." [cue Monty Python].

"When I think of this album it's often (often enough to worry me) in terms of a final station. I don't know what could/should come after this."