The easiest thing I do is assignment songs. They tell me what they need me to write. I can do that fairly quickly. Writing for an orchestra is difficult. Writing songs [on your own] is most difficult of all. Though [writing for] the orchestra is close.

In England, in France, in no other country would a black man have a chance to get elected. There's no two ways about it. Our country [USA] has been better about dealing with immigration and people who are different from each other than any other country in the world, that I know of.

If you have a kid and you try irony out on them, they don't get it at 7, 8 years old. You can't really hide the Internet from kids. It worries me some particularly because I've done Disney and Pixar stuff.

I like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and essentially destroying it!

God bless the potholes on Memory Lane.

There's a million white people better qualified than a black man to be president of America.

Some day you do something where you use everything you know. You don't do it ostentatiously where you see the workings going on. But some day, if you're lucky, that will happen.