Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

I wouldn't run for President. I wouldn't want to move to a smaller house.