The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don't think what you're doing is punk rock.

Music - that's been my education. There's not a day that goes by that I take it for granted.

If me and Mike Dirnt are in the same room, it's not quite right if he's not on stage with me.

And you don't want to always write about politics just for the sake of writing about politics.

I started off small and then this was just the great opportunity.

Songs are like a form of chaos that you can control. It's a form of intelligence that maybe you only understand and you hope that someone else can understand. And you can be anyone you want: you can be as grandiose as you want or you can be as down in the gutter as you want. It's just sort of whatever emotional freeway you're on at the time.

The first time that you escape from home or the small town that you live in - there's a reason a small town is called a small town: It's because not many people want to live there.