You don't expect music to be brilliant when the films are so bad.

It is my livelihood. But its responsibility lies with the film makers who, after 50 years of sound film, have not been able to give cinema an identity of its own.

It's kind of limiting using your intellect to write songs like Brown Sugar, isn't it? The only thing I'm really interested in is comparative religion and ancient history.

The only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked.

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science-the science against which it had vainly struggled-the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough.