Everything that’s rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.

And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

Physically I’m tired at the end of the day and quite glad to be reading in bed by midnight.

Everything that’s rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.

Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there’s joy there’s its opposite, and it’s something you ride if you possibly can.

Playing live if the thing I love doing best.

I’m sure I’m very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

I do think I feel it but you don’t think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don’t think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It’s been a long fifty years.

Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What’s going on? What’s the great discontent at the heart of it?

I’d always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.

I don’t think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that’s what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

It’s like you asked me about the depression thing: you grope towards an understanding of whatever it is your going through, and it’s not personal, there are forces in play around you, and you seek to understand them and that way you can go on.

There is not a single extant study that supports all the arguments against men being with their children. It’s absolute bollocks.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do.

But I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I’ve several friends just haven’t made it by taking Prozac.

Those songs are about getting out; they’re not about getting out of family. It wasn’t about how family life was curtailing because I didn’t know family life.

Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it’s empirically so.

But if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.

Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That’s the way it breaks down in my life.

Music can’t change the world.

Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they’re left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention to their kids.

So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I’m thin. I’ve got my hair. I’m well off. I survived, you know.

It’s really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you’re going to get it to these people.

When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.

And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don’t have the privilege of bringing them up?

The girls are a complete joy and I love their passion. They argue with me like mad and I love that too.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

Well, a sort of epiphany: I was in a great band. And it’s very cool to be at 53 and realise that when you were a kid you were in a great band.

You can’t trust politicians. It doesn’t matter who makes a political speech. It’s all lies – and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.