She didn't mean to be unkind, why she even woke me up to say good-bye.

I never set fire to a piano. I'd like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn't any good.

My momma always said, 'You and Elvis are pretty good, but y'all ain't no Chuck Berry.

Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There's classical, and then there's jazz; romantic, and then there's baroque. I find that very dissatisfying. I was trying to find the thread that connects one type of music - one type of musician - to another, and to follow that thread in some kind of natural, evolutionary way.

If I'm going to Hell, I'm going there playing the piano.

When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music.

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain.