Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.

I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

We have something that is unique. We have our craft. We have our art. We have our desire.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.