I really believe I've been a good person. Not perfect - forget about perfect - but just learning by what I was taught and living by my own values. I might have stepped on a few ants - and a few other things as well - but I've never hurt anybody.

I used to suffer from a lot of regret while touring. Regret at having to leave certain places, people and situations, or just a beautiful day.

When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.

I'm completely in charge of my own life now. Sometimes there's no one there to slap me on the hand and say: 'Stop being so bullish and bossy,' and things like that.

School, for me, was a really, genuinely hard thing. It was hard because l am an artist. You can't send an artist to a place where we learn at a mad slow pace sitting in a class.

We have been restraining the growth of the cost of education-that is, tuition, room and board-to be within approximately one and a half percentage points of the consumer price index.

We will fiercely challenge those forces within the education establishment who impede innovation in our schools and who protect and defend inequality and institutional failure.

Our obsessive focus on college schooling has blinded us to basic truths. College is a place, not a magic formula. It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most - not to the students, but to everyone else.