I consider myself a sit-down comedian really, as much as anything else. I love comedy. Life is a cosmic joke.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

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.

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

I do think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world.

Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.

People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.