I'm a product of the different - whether it be institutional racialism, whether it might be growing up in a low-income area, whether it might be, you know, coming from my mother, my father. I'm a totally different person from my mother and father, but once again I'm from them. We all have our different souls, but I'm from them.

My perspective of capitalism growing up in Berkeley, Calif. in a low-income project, growing up poor, is that capitalism wanted to destroy me, they wanted me to become a worker.

Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.

When I was growing up, man, I didn't know myself. I was striving for respect. Trying to be cool for the girls. I wasn't the biggest dude and I'm a nice guy.

But let us remember, at the same time, government is sacred, and not to be trifled with.

Well, what did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.

I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.

The economy is terrible it's been terrible for years now, and the reason it's bad is not because of a debt-ceiling vote. The reason it's bad is because we have people who believe that by making government bigger by keeping people on unemployment checks and on welfare we're going to dig us out of this mess.