My feeling is that the beaches should belong to everybody. Nobody should be able to build anything. It causes erosion. It's a bad thing altogether.

I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song.

People have often written about me, that I did this for this reason and that for that reason, and theyre usually 98 percent wrong.

Every single year since they invented sound recording it gets better and better. We've always improved it. With MP3, which just sounds awful, it's the first time in the history of recorded music that it sounds worse. It's really - and it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous.

We were raised with the idea that we had limitless chances and we got very shocked to learn that wasn't the case.

The essential elements of singing are voice, musicianship, and story. It is the rare artist that has all three in abundance.

I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.