My house is a very calm and beautiful place and is full of positive energy.
Chris de Burgh
I spent a lot of my childhood saying goodbye because I went to boarding school. I didn't resent my parents for sending me there so young as I understood the limitations of the education system in Africa, where we lived at the time.
I will never forget seeing Alien when it came out in 1979. I'm not that big a fan of horror, but I remember the slow build, the claustrophobic feeling on the spacecraft, this tremendous sense of impending doom.
In my 20s, I got into giving people massages and realised I was able to encourage their bodies to heal by passing my hands over them. I'd never describe myself as a faith healer - it's just that if someone believes in this type of healing, I can help release whatever blockage it is that's preventing them healing themselves.
My secondary schooling was at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, so I'm fond of that part of the world. It's quintessentially English, with village greens, pubs and cricket pitches, and resonates strongly with me.
When you have children, you almost feel like you've made your contribution to the survival of the human species. It's your way of passing the baton.
I'm a strong believer in the importance of energies - ley lines, energy streams, whatever you wish to call them - within a house. They can affect your health as well as your happiness.
The relationship between parents and children who live together is a growing one, and it shifts every day, especially during the teenage years.
You know what happens if I walk out on the stage in Montreal? They stand up and they cheer for three or four minutes. It just brings tears to your eyes, because it's a love affair.
I always bring divining rods when I'm on tour because you can change energy streams by moving furniture around your hotel room.
I've 300 other songs, but 'Lady In Red' is just one of them. Funnily enough, in America, it is massive, but most people wouldn't have a clue who Chris de Burgh was.
I developed my armour at prep school. I was the smallest guy in the school. I got bullied a lot. So I developed broad shoulders.
Philanthropy is never understood by those who don't have it in their own hearts.
I can fix dishwashers. I was brought up in a castle with no money and lots of imagination. I learnt a lot about plumbing at an early age.
I was born in Argentina, and have lived in England, Ireland, Africa and Malta.
I'm not a fool with my money. I've known what it's like to be poor and I don't splash it around stupidly.
You know you get a tube of toothpaste... such a bloody con. You squeeze and squeeze and nothing more comes out? Well, take a pair of scissors and cut it about an inch and a half from the bottom and it's absolutely packed with stuff! I do that, then cut off the top bit, so I can stick that back on and it doesn't dry out!
I love myself. I'm not saying this in a narcissistic way.
Songs don't just suddenly arrive like a taxi you have to work on them and you have to put a lot of time and energy and self discipline into creating that kind of thing.
I made loads of English and Irish friends at university and all they wanted to do was have a good time.
I've been to Australia, Russia and many of places I wanted to see as a child. But I've never visited India. I've had many invitations to play there but it hasn't worked out. People say it's beautiful, but I think I'd react badly to the poverty.
People just love stories.
There wasn't a lot of physical tenderness with my parents. There was plenty of love but we weren't into the hugging thing, which now I've totally reversed with my family to the point where it probably drives them crazy.
I generally write the songs accidentally. They generally come out of nowhere.
I remember talking to an architect and he said 'I am making so much money I don't know what to do' - I am in a business where you don't have an idea from one end of the year to the next how what you are going to earn and it is not like a salary that you can guarantee.
I am much loved.
As a song-writer I have always written with one instrument - either guitar or piano - because I believe that if a song is strong enough to be performed completely stripped down then it is a good one to go on and record.
Canada has a great tradition of supporting songwriters.
Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.
It's every songwriter's dream to come up with a standard.
I have always had a long term view on records as I want them to be books and not magazines and newspapers that you discard very quickly.
I thought I would be an overnight star when I had a hit record in Brazil with my first album - but things didn't work out quite like that.
I think that every songwriter would give their right arm to come up with a standard that is going to be played long after they're dead.
I believe that music is an international language and deserves to be heard all over the world.
I regularly visualise my body from head to toe, and wait for it to tell me if there's anything wrong.
I struggled for so many years.
Before I ever did a stage concert, I'd done hundreds of living-room concerts, which helped a lot.
I'd been to South Africa during the Seventies, when it was definitely not kosher to go there. I felt that the best thing to do was to be a missionary and tell people what was going on in their own country because censorship was so dreadful.
You get pigeonholed. It's a kind of safety device for people who don't really want to look any further outside of the box, but I'm actually impregnable as far as what people say about me.
We are not politically naive.
After university, I set out to see if I could make a career in music. It was a tough journey at first, but by the time I was 23 I'd been signed by A&M Records.
I'm not a big consumer at all. I'm very happy with enough.
I don't spend much on myself. It's a bit of a joke within the family.
I am a humanist.
My father fought behind Japanese lines in the second world war and it traumatised him. Everybody who knew him from before said he was the life and soul of the party - fun to be with - but after the war he was different.
It's critically important to have family around me, and some of my happiest moments are when I'm just with my family.
Being hydrated is a key thing for a singer, especially if you're spending three hours on stage five nights a week, and wine dehydrates me faster than beer.
I read about wine every day.
My dad had a dream of living in an Irish castle, even when we were in Argentina, and in 1960 he found a place without any heat or running water. We had no money, so it was tough.
The first confrontation I had with an Aussie wine was a well-known Cabernet/Shiraz and it reminded me of boiled sweets. I find a lot of Australian wines unsubtle.
