I have been both praised and criticized. The criticism stung, but the praise sometimes bothered me even more. To have received such praise and honors has always been puzzling to me.

Artist - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.

When I see an entire community disenfranchised, it disturbs me. Not that I'm a message guy, per se. I write about people. I like to write about human beings, not crap political rhetoric. I've tried to avoid that all my life. When I wrote about soldiers in Vietnam, I wasn't trying to make a political statement. I was trying to write about how screwed things were for soldiers, and how they still are.

We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

I'm a statistic in a system that a civil servant dominates.

I'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate of culture and intelligence. The culmination of technology and civilized experience.

Ain't no rainbows shining on me, shades of gray are the colors I see.