From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.

By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.