Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world's poorest people.

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.

I used to - my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I've always heard kind of melodies in my head.

Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.