“My influences were mostly gospel. So I was playing my twisted Jewish equivalent of gospel music over his twisted equivalent of rock and roll music. And it was a very excellent marriage.”

In the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City.

The place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, every morning at 10:30 I’d come into work and I’d go into this cubicle that had a little upright piano and fake white cork bricks on the wall.

I started in the music business I was first introduced to 1650 Broadway, uh, which was in reality where everything happened in the ’60s.

I liked being challenged by music. It’s good for me.

Bob Dylan said to the producer, turn up the organ. And Tom Wilson said, oh man, that guy’s not an organ player. And Dylan said.

If you’d done a good job you’d just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go.

Every now and then we could steal somebody else’s stuff.

Every day from 10 to 6, we’d go in there and pretend that we were 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig.

At the end of the playback of the take of “Like A Rolling Stone”, or actually during the thing.

Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony ‘encyclopedia’ compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in.

Musically Bob [Dylan] is a primitive. He’s not a Gershwin, or somebody that uses eloquent music terms.

I believe Irving Berlin was there, and uh, and everything just centered around there.

I don’t care, turn the organ up, and that’s really how I became an organ player.

The very funny thing about “Like A Rolling Stone” is it was a six minute song, there was no music to read from. And there I was playing this unfamiliar instrument.

The “Highway 61” album [of Bob Dylan] was produced by Bob Johnston if I’m not incorrect. And Bob Johnston was an entirely different producer than Tom Wilson.

So I would come in on the upbeat of one. I would wait until the band played the chord, and then as quickly as I could come in play the chord.

A consistent and heart-filled effort to completion is the foundation of excellent work.

A lot of it is on the job training, combined with excellent mentorship.

Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.

Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.

The gold standard makes the money’s purchasing power independent of the changing, ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.

What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.

I always knew that I was tremendously creative. I recited love poems, I wrote stories and I got excellent grades in every subject, except for maths.

Euthanasia” is an excellent and comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.