Jay-Z

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor.

My father is a silent cinema freak, so he took me to 1925 silent films that took forever, like 5-hour movies, but I've seen a lot of that stuff since I was young. And then I saw the film 'Annie,' and I just wanted to be Annie; I just wanted to be that orphan kid and wanted to sing and dance.

There are clearly many good politicians who are guided by religious belief, so the mix can work. But there's a line to be drawn. It would be hugely dangerous for a country's laws to be set by the scriptures, and particularly those of the expansionist religions.