August, the summer's last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.

With a book, there's no volume to turn up. You're very naked with a book.

Barack Obama's administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the soldiers, here comes the food, go go go... Rush Limbaugh told his multi-millions of listeners that Obama only did that to gain favour with black people in America. This is the kind of idiocy that I have to deal with in my country.

She touches me The jungle lights up with incinerating fire Looks like a flaming serpent I look into her eyes I see a movie flickering Car crashes People kicking corpses Men ripping their tracheas out and shaking them at the sky I think to myself: I don’t want to survive this one I want to burn up in the wreckage Cooking flesh in the jungle

After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.

All my big heroes are literary, writers. I'd love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I'd much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It's amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It's always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it's just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.

Unsurprisingly, Nelson Mandela had and still has many detractors.