Not the torturer will scare me, nor the body's final fall, nor the barrels of death's rifles, nor the shadows on the wall, nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain, is hurled but the blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling world.

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.

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.

I confess I've never felt like a passenger.

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.

And who knows which is which and who is who.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?