I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.

I don't care how small the game. I want to win.

I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don't. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.

When somebody shows up and they believe in you, it makes all the difference.

Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.

Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don't have to worry about anything.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you'd see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.