I'm used to writing something, it becomes a record, it comes out. Then I go perform and I play it and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern of my life.

The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad.

Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.

The Clash were a major influence on my own music. They were the best rock 'n' roll band. Thanks, Joe.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.