I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent”s Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

People know more about baseball players contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our childrens lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, Do you want to bring a child into this world? Thats pretty dire.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

Caught between the longing for love, and the struggle for the legal tender, where the sirens sing and the church bells ring, and the junk man pounds his fender. Where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor.

Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.