I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar

What hurts people a lot is taking humiliation.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.

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

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 think it's hypocritical to complain about the rise of China. For 50 years, we were telling everybody in the world that the big threat was Communism, so now the countries that were Communists are now rampant capitalists - and they're doing very well, in some ways much better than the UK. Well, we asked for it. We told them that's what you have to do, and they're doing it, buying up your biggest hotels in New York. You have to laugh.