The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.

I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

Maybe it's naïve, but I would love to believe that once you grow to love some aspect of a culture-its music, for instance -you can never again think of the people of that culture as less than yourself. I would like to believe that if I am deeply moved by a song originating from some place other than my own homeland, then I have in some way shared an experience with the people of that culture. I have been pleasantly contaminated. I can identify in some small way with it and its people.

Always be skeptical about simplicity.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

I couldn't take pictures of green rolling hills.