My father believed very strongly in Ataturk. Ataturk was a very powerful man and a man of great vision.

I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.

The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops.

There's been so much bad blood between the Kurds and the Turks.

I've been in the studio when you go through a track and you run down a track and you know even before the singer starts singing, you know the track is swinging ... you know you have a multimillion-seller hit - and what you're working on suddenly has magic.

People like Clyde McPhatter who came out of the black churches - like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin - were all church singers who became great pop singers because gospel singing is very close to the blues.

My first wife was a theater person.