“I have found out who are my real friends, thanks to the illness and ho...” — Chris Rea Quote

I have found out who are my real friends, thanks to the illness and hospitals.

I feel I've had three careers in one, really. There was the 'Benny Santini' stuff; that came with a general sense of, 'Who the hell is he?' And then there was 'The Road To Hell' stuff, and now there's the blues stuff.

My ambition, a long time ago, was to be a film music writer. A compromise then was to be the guy who wrote songs for a band and played slide guitar. Then the singer didn't turn up for an audition, and I was the only one who knew the words. That was it - bingo! Life took a different course.

Dad was a distant figure, autonomous, a cross between the Pope and Mussolini. He was very Italian, as were all of my uncles, although they were second generation.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.

Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.

I'd heard about a shipwreck that was never found - John Paul Jones' Bonhomme Richard. So I thought, 'Well, I'll go look for it.'

When I was on the X-Factor, I found that I grew a lot as a performer. I knew I could sing but I didn't believe in myself enough... I needed to hear that I was good.