What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

There's the wind And the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say, "Hey, it's not my place To know what's right" There's the weak And the strong And the many stars that guide us We have some of them inside us

I have a sordid past.

I'm amazed at the adolescent nature of some of the religious fanatics in our government. And they're full of double standards.

Everyone has to decide how they're going to appear in their lives, how they're going to put themselves out there to the world.

The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.

In terms of our democracy, we are sort of shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh dear, Guantánamo, that's so awful, that's so awful, but it's here. The pendulum usually swings from left to right and then right to left, but there are so many people in power who have taken the pendulum and just pinned it to the right that there is a fear that it's never going to swing back.