I hope to write a good song and have people hear it. That's it. I don't think songs change the world. People change the world, and if people embrace a particular song as a kind of anthem, then that song becomes part of the process of change.

[on his deficiency as a husband in his first marriage] I was like a chainsaw rendering of Rodin's 'The Thinker', a frozen simulacrum of anger, avoidance and angst in the posture of a man taking a dump.

A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea. I'm not a pacifist. I feel that there are situations where fighting is inescapable, but we don't go looking for those things.. There are some decision-makers in the world whose version of sanity is a little different from what I consider the right one.

[After entertaining troops in Afghanistan] I have great sympathy for, and to some extent sympathy with, those young Canadians that are over there in uniform, doing their best to get a very difficult thing done... [But]at the same time, it seems unlikely to me that they will get either the time or the support, or at least get the support, for a long enough time to finish the mission.