In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.

I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don't want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal.

The gap between rich and poor is, in fact, widening enormously. This idea of building up the powers of people who are already powerful and keeping everyone else back is a recipe for endless misery and conflict.

I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.

There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.

Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.