As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.

Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.

Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Not that the writers weren't good. I believe in those books and those writers very much. It's just that in the climate it's really hard to keep the lights on and the doors open when you're selling poetry and literature that appeals to a fringe audience.

Black Sabbath - one of the world's universal language of music. I felt proud, for three or four minutes of my life combining my voice with Tony Iommi's guitar sound.

I've never been in a situation where I had to run for my life, but I've been bitten by a lot of poisonous snakes where it was fairly painful. Pythons of size have a lot of teeth in that mouth, it's a painful bite and those wounds get infected fairly easily. I've got snake wounds from these animals that have lasted quite a while where it'll ache for several days. Having said that, I've been lucky; it's not like I'm looking for trouble with these animals either. It's not an envelope I'm willing to push.

I don't really have any women in my life, actually those two - the women in my life are two married women who work at my office.