If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.

The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father's face, he's pushing back. He's sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that. So that is punk.

You could split hairs and bring up words like 'doo-wop' and terms like 'soul' or 'R&B', but I think pop music is what you want it to be - that's why it's pop.

The perpetrators of the actual bad stuff that does real and lasting harm to people, like leakage of industrial chemicals into water systems, seem to get not so much as a second glance; the bloviation from media pundits and think tanks creates false problems that waste time and energy debunking.

You want to meet a bunch of really friendly people? Go to a Slayer concert. There'll be some real psychos there, but most of those people will take care of each other.

When a band becomes as truly iconic as the Velvet Underground, there will often be a box set released, overburdened with mediocre material that dilutes what was fine left on its own.

As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.

If there is one set of laws, one Constitution for every citizen, its protections hopefully applied equally to all, then why do the results seem to differ so radically? What do you call that? Look around - you're living in it.

As a young person, I wanted everyone to agree with me.

In the summer of '84, you just couldn't escape the Born in the USA record.

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.

Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn't seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn't at all great for business.

Fish is the only kind of respirating thing that I consume. Everything else I don't want any part of.

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure. They've seen a lot worse.

I would like to become a better photographer. I'm working on that.

I'd like to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'cause I live in California and I just want to see that canned, chemical filled body in my office.

I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to tour with the Beastie Boys and watched almost every set they played on all those dates. Why not? You do your set and then you get to see the Beasties play? Best deal in town.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.

Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets showing the customers the full weight of their contempt. The frenzy to buy cheap crap from China, the human downgrade of people fighting with each other over items they can probably live without, to me, is an insult.

It's one thing to buy a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged.' You actually have to read it to get anything out of it.

I'm not harmful, just introspective. You can probably think I'm weird, but it's not harmful weird.

Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes.

Ramones music has a Pavlovian effect on me - the song starts, and the world blurs around the sound.