If every song is in the past tense, that's a drag, so you have to predict the future.

Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don't know anything about that. I'm no good at it.

What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.

The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.

Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.'

In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.

The welfare state is collapsing all around us. There are people that realize that we can't go on this way, but I'm not sure how many people realize how close we are to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

I believe I and all the Chinese people have such a conviction that China will make continuous progress and the people's wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible.