I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy.

In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all.

My mother told me I said to her, at age three, 'I'm going to go to Italy and get my father in a tractor.' 'You've never seen quite so fierce a little boy as you were,' she told me. She tried to explain that I couldn't get my father in a tractor. Apparently I looked at her and narrowed my eyes and said, 'In that case, I'm going in a double-decker bus,' and stomped off. Which is kind of funny, but it's very sad, as well.

There is a magic in some books / That sucks a man into connections / With the spirits hard to touch / That join him to his kind.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

Part of the reason I'm doing Us + Them tour is to play my part in trying to spread the message that cooperation is a better way to resolve conflicts than confrontation. That bridges are better than walls, that nationalism and exceptionalism is destroying our world and destroying our lives.

That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt. Pepper, it's the most influential record in the history of rock and roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Philosophically, other albums may have been more important, like Lennon's first solo album. But sonically, the way the record's constructed, I think Music from Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it.