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.

In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.

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

I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much of what our culture is comes from not just the United States in general, but New York in particular. In my case, I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

I looked at what adults were doing and how they wanted to earn money, and I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to go away.

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.

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.