Colin Hay quotes:

There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.

I had a very strange career. I mean I went from playing to 150,000 people in 1983/84. Three or four years later I was playing to four people, you know, in Melbourne. I thought - bit strange, you know bit odd, bit erratic.

People say history is boring, and that is true because people are boring. We haven't changed since time began. We're still the same. We've obviously made some changes. When we started, it was all about food, clothing and shelter. Now we watch 'Top Chef', 'Project Runway', and 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.'

Well, my thoughts about California are kind of mythological. To me, as well as being a real place, it's a place where people go to find something - to find happiness or to realize their dreams. So it has that kind of quality of heroism and heartache, and Australia has that, as well.

In certain ways I still feel like I'm finding my way. I feel pretty comfortable playing acoustic guitar and singing, but then I feel pretty good sitting on a reggae groove as well.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.

People say history is boring, and that is true because people are boring. We haven't changed since time began. We're still the same. We've obviously made some changes. When we started, it was all about food, clothing and shelter. Now we watch 'Top Chef', 'Project Runway', and 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time.

I was brought up west southwest coast of Scotland and my mother and father had a music shop, and so I was surrounded by pianos and drums and guitars, and music, of course.

Sometimes there's a general arc that you want to try and get better the longer you do something.

In Scotland, beautiful as it is, it was always raining. Even when it wasn't raining, it was about to rain, or had just rained. It's a very angry sky.

Most people remember me for a couple of tunes.

I've got a long-term plan.

I had a very erratic career. I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know?

I used to drink a lot. I had to stop drinking because it was getting the better of me, and I replaced that with really doing shows.

I tried talking to Jesus, but he just put me on hold...

I don't think I'm going to change jobs at this point.

I just found over the years that it's very hard to change people's perception of what it is that you do.

I don't walk off and come back for encores. I figure I can add four weeks to my life that way.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

I just want to be a better guitar player, really.

I'd love to have a hit record. I don't believe anyone that says they wouldn't like that.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

It's frustrating to do albums that you think are worth listening to, but it's just so difficult to cut through.

I like to let the songs speak so that they can go through some kind of rebirth as you play them.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.

You don't want to get worse at something.

I play in a lot of empty rooms.

I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.

My mother features quite heavily in a lot of my songs.

The thing with playing live is, most of the audience is in their 20s and 30s. If you're older than that, you don't tend to go out to shows anymore. So it's good if you can attract a younger audience because they've got the energy to get up off the sofa and go out.

I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.

I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.

I love going up the West Coast of the U. S. because it's one of my favorite parts of the world to tour.

I find that, rather than the cities, I'm very lucky because the audiences that come and see me are very, generally speaking, truly kind, so I have a great time playing everywhere.

As you get older you don't want to just do the same thing, otherwise there's not much point. I think it's more or less trying to write things that, perhaps, say more by doing less, or you're always trying to refine things, make things a little simpler, a little more essential.

I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas.