"Straight Edge" was a song about my life. There was no structure, no premise as if I was forming a club. There were no tenets. I mean I wrote a song called "Straight Edge," I'll take that, but the song was about my life the way I wanted to live it.

There are certainly good examples of incredibly brilliant, beautiful music that has been made commercially available and sold everywhere. But I would say that, for the most part, quantity certainly does not speak well for quality.

The fact that the U.S. government spends millions of dollars to send murderous robot planes into other people's land to murder them, into other countries, that's a problem. That's what people should be concerned about. The fact that other people don't understand me is not a problem. I keep things in perspective.

Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.

I stand behind all the lyrics I've ever written; I don't have a problem with that.

I don't watch TV but occasionally I'll read the Washington Post. I will say that sports are the only "real thing" on television.