“I’m a songwriter. So I’m OK. But when I wrote “Stand By Me” as a song and to know that the song will probably be here for hundred and hundreds of years to come, it’s great, you know. And it was just simple lyrics.”

If there’s anything about the business that I love and that I’m extremely happy about, is that my career started at that time and that I met some of the greatest entertainers at that time and some are still here.

Many times I’ve gone on tours with Paul Anka. He would have someone sitting behind him to keep people from even talking to him. You were almost in a little restricted area there.

When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we see. No, I won’t be afraid, no, I won’t be afraid, just as long as you stand, stand by me.

And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.

There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that’s in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.

Those things don’t happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they’ll never know the true feeling that we did.

I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.

It’s something that, songwriters just write songs. It’s like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It’s not, it’s not about how many of these painting I’ll sell it’s just how they feel at the moment. And that’s how I wrote “Stand By Me”.

I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.

It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.

The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who’s very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he’s ever done has always been charted.

It doesn’t take me long to write songs.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

You take a chance to do something and you realize in your heart it’s either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. It won’t be an in between, I almost made a hit. It will be an instant flop or an instant success.

I always felt I never chose music, it chose me.

The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.

Without intermediate artists, music is what “American Idol” decides is great or made by the very poor, because Sharon Osbourne’s made everything free.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave.

It is simple awareness devoid of movement to and fro, of past and future, within and without, merit and harm.

I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.

The most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

I wanted to have a good relationship. One that’s romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren’t really that simple.

A stone has no troubles and lives a simple life. The worst that could happen would be being stepped on, but that won’t hurt. Am I right? What about you?

The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.