I guess my idea of a good audience is one that's quiet and listens, but also that's alive: they respond, they're getting the jokes, they're with me. And that' s been happening.

There's been a big buzz about the Charlatans in the last couple of years. I've heard the word Charlatans more in the last few years than I'd heard it for the previous 20 years. People would interview me for years and never even mention the Charlatans.

It's not about retro or modern, it's about this note or that note, which sounds better?

I don't think I'd want a revival. I'm not doing a tribute to myself.

I haven't been drinking for years now. Something's got to give. I don't mind that I'm a guy that's stopped drinking, though this interview is making me mighty thirsty.

About 10 years ago, I took some vocal lessons. I'll bet that helped. I got a tape of exercises that the girl gave me, which I don't do anymore, but they were good. And I don't smoke.

And it really is a good feeling to get up there and make that sound. I'm not stuck in a time warp, because I can use as many of the old songs as I want to, just the favorites.

I was always looking to record, but how much I actually pursued it was another thing. The major labels weren't that interested in me, and the smaller labels didn't have any money to do anything.

My stuff was more of a folk coffeehouse thing, with more acoustic guitar, just me doing a single, and then adding on instruments and voices, with emphasis on lyrics and singing and light kind of acoustic jazz.

I guess my idea of a good audience is one that's quiet and listens, but also that's alive: they respond, they're getting the jokes, they're with me. And that' s been happening.

I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.

There's some pictures of me playing hollow bodies, but I never last long. I always come back to the acoustic.

I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.

Right now, I'm thinking in terms of just having a good band, man. Having a good act for the stage. Being a good performer, you know? Connected to that is future recordings, and future tunes, that kind of stuff.

There've been periods where I had to convince the audience or win them over.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

Yeah, that's what kind of, we get the idea a little bit yeah, because other people from different countries also try as hard as they can to get a medal or a gold medal in the Olympic Games. And you know, if they can work hard, we can work hard as well.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

The idea of licking stamps seemed great fun for me.

Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.

It's slightly complicated for people to grasp the idea of a head of state in human form.

As far as I know, only a small minority of mathematicians, even of those with Platonist views, accept the idea that there may be mathematical facts which are true but unknowable.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

I'm into the idea of responsibility and edification and these things have found me and I have found them. I wanted to be in the movie and I made it known to Mike.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

Many of the Europeans who want Israel to go away don't even know why they do. Nearly a third of those interviewed concede they have no idea what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about. It's enough to know that Israelis are Jews.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star. We had no idea that other people would think we were special, because there was no other lifestyle to compare it to.

When employers tell me they prefer married men, and encourage their men to have homes of their own, because it makes them so much steadier, I wonder if they have any idea of all that that implies.

As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I understand about this idea of terror and what it means to Americans and this idea that we can't just walk around free like we did; life has changed.

In The Name of the King is the right title. To be honest, I don't know who had the final idea for the title but I liked it and it has a strong connection to the movie's story.

Yeah, I had an idea to make a very scary movie, based on a kind of serial murderer that preys on tourists.

When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

When you left on Saturday, I felt a horrible void, I saw you everywhere, on the beach, in your room, in the garden: impossible for me to get used to the idea that you had left.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the United States, currency manipulation, and forgiveness of loans by its government banks.

I do to keep things sounding fresh. Sometimes just changing the running order of the show is a good idea.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.