It went beyond idealism and that ridiculous term "activism," which basically means talking about something but doing nothing. . . . We made giving exciting.

Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

We're looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition... doesn't matter if it's death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty. Our problem is that everybody tries to heal each of the individual aspects of poverty, not poverty itself.

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined

It's either vilification or sanctification, and both piss me off.

What's the point in having a company of secretaries?

You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book