Basically, a band's first record is them coming together and really learning everything, and then, after they're on the road and really become a unit, the next record slams.

A lot of people are really hung on the past - they can't get past that - but you've gotta get past that if you want any future.

If you live in the past, you've got no future.

I don't live in the past.

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time.

I think you hope, throughout the course of your career, if you do things right often enough, you might get a moment in time that you can do something special.

The first time I set out to find George F. Kennan, in 1982, I had just turned 21, begun my final semester at Princeton University and noticed with astonishment that the senior thesis deadline had crept to within four months.

I went to university every day for five years. I thought, 'I must - must - go to school.' Look, my hands, these are like guns. When you have guns, you can relax. But in the future, you need something else.