“That was the hard part of having kids: trying to be on their schedule, then fighting to get to sleep while they are sleeping.”

There’s an honesty in our family – my kids and I are able to talk about things without me putting the fear of God into them.

I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class.

I think that the character actually really loves where he’s at, in his life. He’s just trying to have it make a little bit more sense while he figures out what he actually wants to do with it.

I just plug in and let go.

I have no idea where my career is going. I just make the best music that I possibly can.

Every night I play as if my life depends on it.

I thought everybody was in on the joke. But I was the joke.

I hate celebrities. I really hate them.

We’d go through the script together, rehearsing it before every shot with the other actors. He was just easy to work with. We were able to put it in my language, which was really important.

They have bad taste. I am not a good-looking guy.

Punk is always something that’s going to be with us and to try and explain that would be stupid at this point.

With the video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams we were going for something a bit like Ladykillers, you know? Pretty and demented at the same time…like me!

Some times I need to apologize, sometimes I need to admit that I ain’t right, sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut, or only say hello, sometimes I still feel I’m walking alone.

I’m always a work in progress.

When I was done with the movie [Ordinary World], I felt really compelled to start working on another album. Little did I know, they were going to come out back to back.

Pretty and demented at the same time, like me.

There is no force more liberating than the knowledge that you are fighting for others.

As I now often tell my daughter Lila, no matter what stage of life you’re in, when you want something – no matter how impossible it seems – you need to fight for it. When you believe in something, fight for it. And when you see injustice, fight harder than you’ve ever fought before.

If something’s working, you lean into it. You don’t fight it.

If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.

Id have to fight for an Australian role over an American actor, and I already have to do that overseas, so why would I have to do it back at home?

Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls ‘The Patriot’s Dream.

Especially today as we fight the war on terror – against an enemy that represents hatred, extremism and stands behind no flag – we need to remember the sacrifices that have gone into protecting our flag.

Giving a 10-year mandatory minimum for a second offense fist fight is not going to reduce the chance that someone will be stabbed 16 times when you are not funding any of the programs that are desperately needed to actually reduce juvenile crime.