I joke with my kids, who love history, that I'll be the only governor to be elected twice in his first term.

Washington, or as I like to call it, 68 square miles surrounded by reality.

More people on unemployment benefits is not success in America, fewer people on not because we kicked them off but because they have been able to get a job in the private sector, because government got out of the way.

I'm not so in with the prescriptive avant-garde agenda. I can do that sort of thing, but I feel that I'm still interested enough in song structure. When I look at a lyric on the page, the lyric is alive to me, looking like soldiers in a field. I can move it around, and it's very black-and-white.

Collective bargaining isn't a right, it is an expensive entitlement. Once and for all, we are giving the taxpayers a voice in this debate. We put the power back in the hands of the people.

The harder part of doing a real story is that there are real people and you have a responsibility to not just go crazy with their lives and have them do things which are not their character, that they then have to live with.

Melodies are far more interesting. They are there, in your face, in certain sections of the songs. People do complain about the melody thing, but we do hit patches of melody and beauty, as well as the other stuff.