Love is the reason for it all.

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

I'm in the mood for love, simply because you're near me. Funny, but when you're near me I'm in the mood for love.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

A song just doesn't come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.

The songwriter mustn't fall in love with his own song. If it doesn't belong, he can't push it into a show. Let him save it; maybe it'll fit in another show.