“A lot of the album is about women: mothers, lovers, daughters. I think the way a man treats women is always a function of his relationship with his mother. My mother died during the recording of the record. She was a pretty important person to me in my life, and I knew that she would appreciate the album being dedicated to her.”Sting (855)

“‘History will teach us nothing’ is a polemic statement designed to open a debate. I don’t agree with the statement, I think there is a certain truth in it, but the opposite statement is equally true, that history is useful. I think it’s a useful debate. Two songs on the last record became an English course – one song called ‘Russians’, the other one about the coal-miners, and they asked my permission to use them in English books so the students could discuss what the song was about. This song is a little like that: it opens with a statement that invites discussion.”Sting (855)

“For instance, ‘All This Time’ is a black comedy song. Two priests are at Billy’s father’s deathbed – he’s been injured in a shipyard accident – and Billy doesn’t want the ritual that’s being served up, he wants to take his father and bury him at sea. There’s something very funny about that. And the old man doesn’t want their bungling either. The priests say things like, Blessed are the poor, their reward will be in Heaven, and the father says, That’s crap, we want it now! I think my dad was like that, He did receive the Last Rites, but I think he died angry. And I was angry with him. I was angry at the whole fucking situation. And there wasn’t time to sort it out.”Sting (856)

“It reflects the confusion of the time [the build up to the invasion of Iraq – Ed]. I was in the centre of ‘old Europe’, reading the papers, thinking: ‘Are there weapons of mass destruction? If we go in, are we going to be blown up?’ Things were changing at such a rapid pace that I felt I had better finish it quick. It must have felt like that before the Second World War. I don’t know the answers’. I’m struggling, just like everybody else. But what we see in the papers everyday is insanity. The world needs therapy.”Sting (857)

“Mentally it was a very tough record to make. The songs are written almost subconsciously and I only figure out what they mean later on. When you string all the songs together you see an underlying theme. It was definitely a difficult time to be creative, first of all the threat of war post September 11th and then what happened. There’s a certain amount of confusion and dread on the record as well as a great deal of joy and hope.”Sting (859)

“‘Sacred Love’ is about the way that sex has been denigrated to something that’s just an amusement, or something frivolous, or something dirty, or something wrong with it. It’s God’s greatest creation, the ability to create, the ability to give pleasure, to give love to someone else. It’s quite a sexy song but, at the same time, it has this religious individual, he’s finding  transcendence through sexual love, a ritualized sexual contact. I believe in sacred love.”Sting (859)

“It’s about the…sometimes a father’s love is misconstrued as overbearing and controlling. Conversely, a son’s ambition can seem like some “pie in the sky” fantasy. Neither are wrong, but they rarely reconcile.”Sting (1226)