The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

I'd like to be a better writer, but I have no dreams to direct or do a screenplay. And I'd love to have a big starring role in a movie because the paycheck would be bigger. That's the only reason I do films.

I can deal with people who watch me on stage but I am not good in communicating with people any other way than through my work.

You’ll never know that just sitting across a room full of people, I have transformed you into a goddess. A destroyer of despair.

Sitting in a room, alone, listening to a CD is to be lonely. Sitting in a room alone with an LP crackling away, or sitting next to the turntable listening to a song at a time via 7-inch single is enjoying the sublime state of solitude.

Russia is tough. The history, the land, the people - brutal.

I come from a town of great musicians: Washington, D.C. It's no joke, that history.