“Fortunately, as we all know, it’s impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.”

I think we’ve always been better live.

Sometimes you work with somebody you’ve never heard of because you just feel like working.

I think I drift toward sad love songs.

I’m playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there’s Howie. Tom’s in the middle and we’re playing all this stuff I love. It’s great.

If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that’s the cardinal sin.

We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.

Jeff Lynne is an arranger, and I think it’s probably much easier for him to go ahead and play a part himself than to try to show somebody else what he wants. But it’s hard for me to say; I barely know Jeff.

I got to play on a couple of records with the Rolling Stones, and that was really special to me.

Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level.

I try to find little things that you can do to move the song along and things that serve the song.

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that’s great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don’t want to get in the way of the song.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

God made beauty so we’d know how He felt about us.

You know, as you get older, the first thing you lose is memory. It seems to be happening with me.

Those are my people, you know? The ones who are going to crash and burn.

What you know will keep you from what you need to know if you don’t remain a novice.

The Universe knows itself and expands itself through me.

On occasion I omit commas. On occasion, I use them. (The more you know about English, the less you’re likely to think there are unbreakable “rules” for a lot of these things.)

We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.

I really don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.