“I never wanted to be a performer, that was not one of my goals. I wanted to be a musician and that was that.”

We’ve made mistakes, But we’ve made good friends too. Remember all the nights we spent with them? And all our plans, Who says they can’t come true? Tonight’s another chance to start again. It’s just another New Year’s Eve, Another night like all the rest.

I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive…And since I’m a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

I’ve been up, down, trying to get the feeling again. All around, trying to get the feeling again. The one that makes me shiver, made my knees start to quiver.

You know, when I did ‘American Idol’ the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.

For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

Fame is always a shock to the system; there’s no school to go to, there are no books to read, and when it hits you, it’s a surprise. You could be working for 10, 20 years and when it finally hits you, you get knocked down.

I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn’t even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.

I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don’t look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don’t look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That’s what I do.

You say something stupid and the next morning you’re in the headlines.

My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that’s actually happening.

You can’t possibly prepare for what happens to you the day you hit No. 1 and people treat you differently.

I think the people who are out there for fame get themselves in a lot of trouble.

There’s just no quiet in Vegas.

I was always into the music. Music, in general, saved my life. But the fame part… I would look up, see what was going on around me, the reporters and photographers and all, and then I would just go back to making my music.

QVC has been very good to me.

Misfits aren’t misfits among other misfits.

I have just wanted to be an actress. That’s always been my goal. I didn’t want to be famous.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

Be honest about what you can get. To make a sacrifice and to get what you want you need to be very certain. In other words: always think about your objective, have a clear goal and commit to it from the heart.

An indispensable hypothesis, even though still far from being a guarantee of success, is however the pursuit of a specific aim, whose lighted beacon, even by initial failures, is not betrayed.

Goal setting should be part of your daily and weekly routines and should not be based on a calendar year or month.

You just can’t believe how quickly things happen in football and the way life turns. I went from being the bad guy, the worst player who gets all the criticism, to being the player who makes the difference and scores the important goals.

I hope to be around past the 90’s. I don’t want to just be categorized as one of this era. My goal is to have a career that stands.

My message is just showing people how I came from nothing.