If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.

Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.

It's a different ballgame now, so that lets [teo] Macero out. He's always complainin', always sick.