I'm a big Germs fan; most people are.

Without an education, you won't have a future.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm willing to bet one of my arms right now that as long as there's electricity, Ramones music is going to be relevant.

Someone like Ashlee Simpson, she lip-synchs on 'Saturday Night Live,' gets totally called out la Milli Vanilli, and no one really cares that much. It doesn't make me hate Ashlee; she's just taking instructions.

There is no way you are going to be forgiven for blowing up a village and killing a bunch of people.

August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame. That, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity of my native Washington, D.C., only seemed to heighten the misery.

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

I think a lot of Americans have never been all that hungry. They've never had war on their shore, and they've never suffered the way other cultures have suffered. I'm not saying we should go suffer. Not at all. I'm saying we should be more aware of how other cultures exist.

I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when Bhutto was assassinated, and the next day, you know, there's just plumes of smoke everywhere. I mean, Islamabad is on fire.

I think self-reliance and self-responsibility and self-accountability will help you as a parent, a teacher, as a citizen as a friend.

I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the two guys with motorcycle helmets on?

Edward Snowden, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, professes to have had access to whatever he wanted to know about anyone's anything. If he's telling the truth, why does he have such permeability without any government oversight? Is that OK with you?

Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is - marriage.

I tend to gravitate to the darkest or most obscure part of any venue in an effort to have my own space to experience the music on my own, free from unwanted conversations and other distractions.

There's a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside of bodies of people behind the counter at Kinko's.

I spend several days at a time without enough sleep. At first, normal activities become annoying. When you are too tired to eat, you really need some sleep. A few days later, things become strange. Loud noises become louder and more startling, familiar sounds become unfamiliar, and life reinvents itself as a surrealist dream.

As far as I have been able to understand, the Japanese seem to keep things close to the vest. Friendly but remote and polite to the point of being invisible. It is in the music, literature, film and art that the Japanese really seem to express themselves.

Smart people make good choices. They dig science and say 'no' to the invasion of sovereign nations for the pleasure of corporations.

I am an employment hyena. I am happy to make a meal of what the lions leave behind.

In Israel, there's a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you've got to deal with the truth. Things happen real fast. Your day goes from cool to catastrophic in one second. Israelis know that the cafe you're in could blow up, or the shopping mall, and they rock that.

As so much music is listened to via MP3 download, many will never experience the joy of analog playback, and for them, I feel sorry. They are missing out.

I think more airtime should be given to Donald Trump and Orly Taitz. They should run for office together. They should open for Charlie Sheen.

I don't mind bees and think we are all the better for having them around. I like the taste of honey.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

I have healthy disagreements with political parties I'm not aligned with, but I don't think it should be to the point where we're cursing and trying to strangle each other.

I think more tolerance, more people having more access to a chance to be literate, and a chance to stay healthy makes for a more peaceful planet.

As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.

And I laugh at myself when I screw things up, which happens all the time.

I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.

People will remember that the Tea Party was co-opted and funded by billion-dollar corporations, and that it was supported by Fox News and other outlets with the same vigor with which they attempt to denigrate the Occupy protesters.

The only thing worse than the Pastor Terry Jones scheduled Koran burning is the fact that he canceled the proposed event.

I don't know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film 'Annie Hall,' but it is, in a way, to Los Angeles and 'Hollywood' what 'This Is Spinal Tap' is to many musicians.

Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He's very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says.

I can't remember that I ever had just a minute of stage fright.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.

I wonder how Colin Powell sleeps at night. I would like to have a word with him because he lied. He lied. He lied to me. He lied to my face through the camera at the U.N.

Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down.

August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I've been listening to in the late spring and summer.

I never thought about getting any tattoos removed.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

In many ways, America is on the receiving end of a pendulum that has been swung with great force, and for a long time, outward into the world. The impact is a wake-up call on every level.

When you're going into an employment environment that looks pretty scary, it is easy to lose your moral compass, your decency, your sense of civility and your sense of community.

'Fox News' will one day come to an end. Led Zeppelin will not. It's as simple as that.

To see change in your own area code is very powerful. There's a little orphanage down the street from my company, and we donate $1 from the sale of each CD we sell to the orphanage.

We Californians can watch the Weather Channel for images of winter's brutality unleashed upon our fellow Americans and thank our lucky stars we don't have to contend with it.

Sleep is for squares.

Too bad that Paul Ryan confessed to being a fan of Rage Against The Machine. By doing so, he not only begged for a bucketing by many of their fans but actually got one from the band's guitar player, Tom Morello.

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.