But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.

I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.

That's what I'm about -- getting engaged. Too many people don't wade in the mud with the politicians.

I'd like to think that in a generation or two we'll have politicians whose life experience reflects that of the people who are voting for them.

Don't saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a post-ideological world. That's how a Donald Trump can get through. He has no ideology at all: in that sense, he's a bit like Mussolini. I think that ultimately Trump will lose the election and in the process destroy the Republican party - but then I'm an optimist, ha ha ha! So he might not lose. He might be in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world!

Certainly, the international image of the United States today is a lot less positive than 10 years ago. And that really shouldn't be, because you have been the victims of this awful terrorist attack, and I think America deserves the sympathy of the world.