How do you tell troops who volunteered to fight for our freedoms that the country they fought for won't take care of them when they come back? In the time of war our troops and their families are supposed to be our number one priority.
For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me.
Kids just don't read any more. They spend much more time with video games. It's just hard to get kids to read anything. Book sales have dropped dramatically, too. I think 90% of the books are bought only by 5% of the US population.
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.
There was this whole middle time that only Chris Rock came out of, you know, 10 years ago it was Chris and a few other people, but that's about it. Chris is in a class of his own; I don't see another comedian who I put in high regard as him.
Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
So you know, my plan was that I was going to make records, and be a rock star. And that's really what I wanted to do. And I sang from the time I was very young.
But I started it when I was going through a transitional time in my life. At the end of it, it really sort of symbolized it. I had made room to change, and room to grow. I recorded it in a little room.
