Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

It's not in our nature. Americans have never been a people that drive through a nice neighborhood and say 'Oh I hate the people who live in these nice houses.'

We are a people that have always celebrated other people's success so long as we always had the opportunity to meet that success ourselves. That is the American nature. That is the American character. That is one of the things that makes us different from the rest of the world. And I'm afraid we could lose that or are on the verge of losing that.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species including Americans.

I know I'm not known as method. By nature I'm not a brooder. What I continue to use is a mixture of the English school which is traditionally outside-in and the more American way of working from the inside out.

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians who are imprisoned behind these bars music's got these bars and measures you know.

It's a really unfair world because life is where I am all day long we listen to American music. So I don't see why the radios in the U.S. cannot even put aside one hour a day just to play music that is not American.

We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

Since I was a kid I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties Chicago blues of the Fifties West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.