I would say that Times Square was the central hangout for Burroughs, Kerouac, and myself from about 1945 to 1948.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

Black musicians were imitating speech cadences, and Kerouac was imitating the black musicians' breath cadences on their horns and brought it back to speech. It always was speech rhythms or cadences as far as the ear that Kerouac was developing. All passed through black music.

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

I first learned the power of a Labour government to transform lives growing up in my hometown of Stockport.

We want to make politics sort of entertaining. If it is entertaining, people are going to be interested in it, and if they are interested in it, they might think more about it and maybe involve themselves in some way down the line.