I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.

We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.

There are people I would like to work with. Its a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I cant really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.

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

When there is a voice in a piece of music, we tend to focus on the voice. That is probably something from when we were babies and we depended on hearing our mother's voice.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.