Music is more difficult - try naming a political band. The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys are political, but they are more funny than they are political.

I don't see it in terms of changing things, but rather using language and music as weapons for fighting a mainstream media which is predominately right wing, and loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests.

I think we're entering a very dangerous time. The West has set itself up, decided it's in charge, not for good intentions, not for the benefit of mankind.

We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked.

Music is more difficult - try naming a political band. The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys are political, but they are more funny than they are political.

And I know I'm paranoid and neurotic, I've made a career out of it.

My dad spent his whole life getting into fights for telling what he believed to be the truth. Basically it comes from my dad-and he's screaming right-wing, so there you are.

I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.

I think sometimes all the charities are doing is mopping up the blood. It's a shame.

I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state.

Well, my son really loves wildlife. And everytime he draws a polar bear I want to tell him there probably won't any by the time... he's my age. That's kinda hard to deal with.

Well, I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War, about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

My songs are my kids. Some of them stay with me, some others I have to send out, out to the war. It might sound stupid and it might even sound naive, but that's just the way it is.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

We don't have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we're channelling it through the new record.

My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art.

Coming from Britain, I was terrified of meeting all these other artists, because artists over there tend to fight with each other a lot, the premise being that there's not enough room for everybody.

This was something that was obsessing me and creating a writer's block. To get involved and get stuck in, get the proper information about what's going on has really helped.

The people in charge, globally, are maniacs. They are maniacs, and unless we do something about it these people are going to deprive us of a future.

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job.

You think I have the responsibilty... I have the responsibility to give the fans a good time!

It is difficult to make political art work.

So ultimately, it's idealistic to think that artists are able to step away from the power of the media and the way it controls things, and go on doing their own things.

At home I've got a very puerile, juvenile sense of humour.

I wrote a lot of stuff quickly: pages and pages of notes that seemed pretty incoherent at first. Most of it was taken from the radio because -suddenly being a parent- I'd be confronted by the radio giving a news report every hour of the day.

I've never believed that pop music is escapist trash. There's always a darkness in it, even amidst great pop music.

We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.

Generally speaking, if people are prepared to stick their heads above the power pit, like Zinn says, and absorb what's going on around them, it makes them think.

I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.

I went to a boys' school, and I didn't realize that most guys join bands because they wanted to get girls. I was not really focused on that the way everybody else was.

People in bands don't have the kind of conversations people might think they have. The best things about being in a band are the things that are unsaid.

Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it.

I could blow bubbles. Bubbles would solve any dilemma we face. If bubbles were president there would be no war.

Time is running out for us But you just move the hands upon the clock You throw coins in the wishing well For us You just move your hands upon the wall.

If we replaced all of our guns with chicken sandwiches it would end all war immediately.

Open your mouth wide a universal sigh.

It's funny, 'cause it seems like just yesterday that I was the youngest player just starting out. But now there are young players all over the league, and they'll ask me questions about playing overseas or finding an agent.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

You amaze me. You're 229 years old and that's what you think is funny.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.