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

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy.

Drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble.

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 find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

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.