“Part of the problem with some elements of the European debate is that they hanker for the days when we were a great power. Those days are gone, and they went a long time ago.”

The key to it has to be some sort of proportional representation, which allows there to be more parties.

Without accountability, there can be no freedom. I know it seems like a paradox.

It’s nice that the independent scene is taken seriously, and has been.

The spiritually starving hesitate to partake of the Spirit like a child’s reaction to new and strange food. They must be offered a tiny bite on a spoon.

I love horses. I spent seven years as a racing commissioner on a horse-racing board.

I think if you’re going to make political art, you have to engage at some level. You can’t just write about politics, you have to try and be politics as well.

It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street – which Im also in favour of.

That’s what I’m about — getting engaged. Too many people don’t wade in the mud with the politicians.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

I want to like my music before you like it. I don’t want to sell anything that I don’t really like.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and… in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.

[A]s long as you’re comfortable it feels like freedom.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a post-ideological world. That’s how a Donald Trump can get through. He has no ideology at all: in that sense, he’s a bit like Mussolini.

War what is it good for? It’s good for business.

Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away. If you stick around, I’m sure we can find some common ground.

This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw ‘The Killing Fields,’ and I’ve got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck.

Approximately four years ago, we were told that Jerry Rice would be a free agent and there were people who felt that he no longer could contribute.

In China, we don’t have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn’t even have a gallery.

If reality today is different from the reality of 30 years ago, we can’t keep describing reality in the same way as we did 30 years ago.

I don’t know that it was much better thirty years ago. The music industry just wasn’t as efficient.

I actually had less time and the exact same budget on Hairspray, which was few years ago and this is a much bigger movie [then Rock of Ages]. That’s the way studios do it now.

If someone had been asked twenty years ago what direction they thought music was going in, they wouldn’t have said sampling.

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.