I say if you're going to take a chance on something, you just go full balls to the wall.

Everybody should have their own thing, and if he don't want to be a role model, that should be up to him. In the right situations, I can try to help and be a role model, but I'm still gonna speak my mind, and if that affects the role-model deal, then too bad.

Don't compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.

My first gig, I was about 17 or 18. But I'd been singing a long time. I got a guitar when I was 8, and started trying to write songs as a teenager.

Health care's a great example. We spend billions of dollars a year in foreign aid helping people in countries where the money never gets to see the bottom tier, because the bad, corrupt politicians in the government that they have there end up taking what we give them.

Here's the thing. Just because you're pro-troops doesn't mean you're pro-war. And just because you're anti-war doesn't mean you're anti-troops. Just because you don't support the war people think you are anti-troops and you are a bad guy.

I feel an obligation to those people who are willing to go lay their lives on the line. These are the same people that when we call on them, and we 100 percent agree as a country ... in our lifetime there's gonna be an event take place ... just like when 9/11 happened, everybody wanted to bring them to justice. When we called on the troops, they went in.