I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says 'What kind of music do you make?' and you say 'Pop music.' You may as well have 'I'm not cool' stamped on your forehead.

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world and machines - TV telephone cars - were still more or less ancillary and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

Today comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.

I get heartfelt thanks from all kinds of people. Today I heard from a waitress in Georgia who has lost her job and is trying to figure out how her local bank can change the terms on her credit card and I heard from a physicist at a major research university who wants to explain a better theory of financial stress tests.

Have you heard about the Irishman who reversed into a car boot sale and sold the engine?

I was in prison for a charge in Texas murder one. Back in the '70s in Texas I was there. I heard the shot. I was in the car.

My daughter Lila loves the smell of gasoline - she always says 'Mummy keep the door open ' when I'm filling up the car. I've heard it is one of the most preferred scents in the world - maybe that's something to study for my next fragrance!

I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!

You hear entertainers all the time saying 'If I couldn't get paid for this I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum I'd do it for free'?