“Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano.”

The most important thing about skating is that it teaches you to do the things you should do before you do the things you want to do.

Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible – it wasn’t an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

If anyone can show me … that there is any reason – other than fear – to believe in any version of an afterlife, I’ll give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn’t come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

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.

I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.

I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.

I never saw my grandfather because he had died before I was born, but I have good memories of my grandmother and of how she could play the piano at the old house.