I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.

Im not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.