I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head. It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it. In talking to you I feel very much more at ease than my colleagues who gave the speeches during the banquet. The first and by far the most likely pattern is a return to agrarian existence. Do what you really want to do. That's why God put you on this earth. The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia. Children want to do what grownups do. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was 1978 when Superman came out, and I kept thinking, Why don't they do something about it? They've done all these crappy attempts at comic book film adaptations. What can we do different? Why don't we just re-release this thing? The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. I am fiercely independent and I probably wouldn't be if it wasn't for the way in which I was brought up. It's not a very high failure rate if you choose people that you really like the sound of. Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed. Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim. I thought I did well for someone who has been out for 10 or 11 months. Then I was sub against Liverpool and tried to play for the guys and work on my fitness. To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem. I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control, but I think education is the way to give new impetus to the poverty question. It is my firm belief that I have a link with the past and a responsibility to the future. I cannot give up. I cannot despair. There's a whole future, generations to come. I have to keep trying. If you ask people what they've always wanted to do, most people haven't done it. That breaks my heart. My kids get everything they want and are raised well. Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is. I often talked to Bing Crosby, and while I liked him, I never understood why he was so popular. To me his voice was just a gimmick. I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst. I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front. The time frame is very small to disarm the militia, to bring about a security situation in which the governing council, the 24 Iraqis or however many others they appoint, can govern the country. I think my speeches are hilarious. I think I'm a natural comedian, but I like denying people the chance to laugh. I want to deny you the relief of the punchline. Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. I wouldn't encourage new writers to start off publishing through electronic media... it still isn't wide enough for the readership they would need to get a good start. We definitely need to get the excitement back. Ay, rail at gaming - 'tis a rich topic, and affords noble declamation. Go, preach against it in the city - you'll find a congregation in every tavern. Don't you know that every perfect life would mean the end of art? If you are in a band like my brother, Rudolf, who is in the Scorpions, then you have a kind of umbrella and you cover each other. You have five people to discuss things with and you are all in the same boat, and therefore make much wiser choices. The Iraqi elections were an important first step. You have to support your children to have a healthy relationship. I write books to find out about things.