I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking "Uptown Girl!" I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called "Ragdoll," which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy.

If you tell kids they can't have something, that's what they want.

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.

Why don't the Beatles get back together? Why don't nobody sing of romance?

I always wrote the music first, and the music gave me the mood and the lyrics were pretty much put in to give you a map, where that mood came from and where it's going. But my first love was really the music itself, and I guess I've gone back to that.

Musicians know all about unemployment. You're unemployed a lot, and I think there's a great deal of empathy between musicians and people who are out of work.

I took a fresh pack of Luckies, a mint called Sen-Sen, my old man's Trojans.