My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stopped working till they dropped, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings.

Most of the time, our deeper, stronger feelings are things we all have in common.

Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.

We all grow up with anger. It's part of the human condition. But what do you do with that? It seems obvious to me that you've got to use it for something, but you have to separate it from your ego.

Here's Iraq, where irrigation was invented, where law was invented, where writing was invented. All these things that we consider necessities of civilization started there. And the people who live there damn well know that.

A number of Iraqis told us they had welcomed the U.S. forces as liberators initially but in the intervening months, they had come to feel that they had swapped one oppressive regime for another. The Iraqis did exchange one oppression for a lighter kind, in some ways.

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see, but they follow me everywhere. I guess that should tell me I'm traveling toward light.