“I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway.”

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.

I’m sure that I don’t know everything I want to know. I have so much more to learn.

My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don’t even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it’s like awards don’t mean anything.

It’s like an American tradition. A person gets successful and then he’s supposed to change for the worse. It’s silly.

The dream – you never achieve it. The excitement of life lies in the hope, in the striving for something rather than the attainment.

Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President.

Everyone has a right to love and be loved, and nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong.

I’m not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn’t talked about at all.

Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

Why don’t you have a cup of coffee at least? I, um, I’m a little low in sugar and I don’t have any cream, but it’s real coffee.

Around people I don’t know, I’m totally at a loss.

I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it’s graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It’s a wonderful thing.

We cannot let the right wing roll back more than thirty years of social progress.

What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other… but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.

There’s a part of you that always remains a child, no matter how mature you get, how sophisticated or weary.