My upbringing was very straightforward suburban working class upbringing.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

I'm still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I'm much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that's because they've moved, not me.

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.

Being spokesman for a generation is the worst job I ever had.

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.

There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you're an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.

That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really.

Even with politics, stuff comes around again. Woody Guthrie would recognize America today.

I enjoyed so much working with the guys from Wilco, and riffing off of them, and having someone come up to me with ideas, because normally in the studio it's me who has to come up with all the ideas.

My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter.

I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.

In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.

My upbringing was very straightforward suburban working class upbringing.

All musicians start out with ideals but hanging on to them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity. Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.

I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.

By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.

We read our own political content into The Clash, and they accepted it.

Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

Make no mistake: The organization of the working class must be both economic and political. The capitalist is organized upon both lines. You must attack him on both.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

I certainly did feel inferior. Because of class. Because of strength. Because of height. I guess if I'd been able to hit somebody in the nose, I wouldn't have been a comic.

I grew up in Michigan, in a very small town, Centreville. In my graduating class, I had like 92 people.

These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries.

We need to work together, on a bipartisan basis, to create new jobs, increase job training, enact real and substantive middle class tax relief, and reward companies that create jobs at home.

At one point in college I was so shy that I'd drop out of a class if asked to speak in front of other people.

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

I was a class clown.

I made a living out of being a class clown.

Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.

I have thought about the next steps, and you know, they still don't know that I can dance. They don't know it, and it's frustrating me because I feel that it's an edge that I have, and I'm not talking about I took this hip hop class, I'm talking about this is how people actually know me.

I met Kevin when I was 19, at a Second City workshop. We were paired up together in the first class I went to. By the end of the class we formed our improv group, and over the next three years we performed leading up to the formation of The Kids in the Hall.

Making my class laugh and getting in trouble. I was the class clown.

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.

Alan Moore does have a sheen of class. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure there was a metaphoric level, I'm not denying that, but let's face it. the main reason he was doing a super-hero comic was because he was working for a super-hero comic book company.