You know, they say you can reduce genius to someone who spent 10,000 hours trying to get good at something. I'm not claiming either one of those. I haven't done anything for 10,000 hours but sleep. But you do stuff enough, you get better at it. Usually it's a simple thing like that. Essentially, a brainless endeavor.
Randy NewmanI sit here in this chair, I pour myself some whiskey, and watch my troubles vanish into the air.
Randy NewmanSome 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.
Randy NewmanMore of my songs are intended to be funny than almost anyone else. Sometimes maybe it cheers me up a bit. I've got a distance from it. Sometimes what I'm writing is more important to me than the rest of my life. It's more important to me that I'm writing well than anything else.
Randy NewmanThe best of my songs are more than just a joke. There's something else going on - a character, or it's not just a plain joke.
Randy NewmanI've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.
Randy NewmanWho would want to break into [the music business]? It's like a bank that's already been robbed.
Randy NewmanAnd the Lord said: I burn down your cities - how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That's why I love mankind.
Randy NewmanThis one guy's wife is such a pretty brown thing, that I'm liable to give her a poke or two. Whaddaya think of that?
Randy NewmanI like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and essentially destroying it!
Randy NewmanIf 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.
Randy NewmanHe got drunk last night, kicked Mama down the stairs. But I'm alright, so I don't care.
Randy NewmanI think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.
Randy NewmanI am not overlooking any mail. I'm looking at all of it. I even wrote back to the Viagra people.
Randy NewmanI realized that, instead of moving people closer to a salvation decision, an answer can push them further away. Rather than engaging their minds or urging them to consider an alternative perspective, an answer can give them ammunition for future attacks against the gospel.
Randy NewmanI've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music... Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what.
Randy NewmanIn 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.
Randy NewmanIf I were to die tomorrow, I think they'd say Newman 56, composer of the hit song, Short People. Jumped off a mountain today.
Randy NewmanI'm interested in geography and weather and things like that, and if you don't write love songs, you've gotta go somewhere. I wrote a lot about places because that's what else there was. I had to stop myself from writing more of them.
Randy Newman