Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life or in the politics of the world around you it is wonderful to go into that studio and tell yourself what to do.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

I'm not really involved with politics... I'm living in my cocoon with my classical music around.

Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up.

We need to dig deep and give people a reason to be optimistic just as Obama is doing in America. Because in the same way that outcome of the U.S. elections will change the course of events there and around the world so too do politics here in Britain.

Negative politics have always been around.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

For too long we have focused on our differences - in our politics and backgrounds in our race and beliefs - rather than cherishing the unity and pride that binds us together.

I like to see myself as a bridge builder that is me building bridges between people between races between cultures between politics trying to find common ground.