The people who have impressed me most - and the closest I've come to having heroes - are the people who have devoted their lives to making things better for others. These are people whose names you never hear, people who work for Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and other humanitarian groups. They're just out there in the world, doing stuff.

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse, fashionable fascism dominates the scene.

Wave the flag, wave the Bible, wave your sex or your business degree, whatever you want, just don't wave that thing at me.

All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.

Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same.

Gotta kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight.

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.