“Yeah, I’m old as the hills and you would think I’d be out to pasture someplace because I’ve done everything, but nothing has changed.”

I couldn’t bear the road anymore. I’m sure that a lot of people who have been on the road a long time will say the same thing. After a while, waiting for bedroom service and planes – I wanted to go home.

I am a musician. My passion for music has obliterated everything in its path for my entire life.

Everybody has to find out: who are you? What do you believe in?

No one person or material thing could ever come close to the feeling I get when the music is right.

Touring is a young man’s game, but after 30 years of it, I want to stay home.

I feel that after all those horrible reviews and jokes, I wasn’t crazy all these years to stand up for the music I believe in. This album has proven that somewhere in the human race, the human heart is still racing and breaking and I am so grateful.

I keep reading about people who want to be famous – it’s not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.

My style of music is the great American songbook meets the pop world of the Seventies and Eighties.

The melody seems to have gone to the country. The country music seems to still have melody and interesting lyrics. But pop music, you’ve got to really listen hard to somebody who’s doing a good melody and a good lyric.

My hair was slicked down with a part. But that was before I discovered the blow-dryer. Now I’m fabulous.

If I Should Love Again’ – I was just so impressed with myself writing something like that. It wasn’t a single and people didn’t really know about it, but it’s a beautiful song and that’s part of what I’m loving.

Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they’re full of muscle. ‘Copacabana’ sounds like it could have been released yesterday.

Here’s proof that if you live long enough, anything is possible.

I didn’t want to be treated like a ‘star.’ I fought it constantly, and I think I was rude.

Sneakers are not my thing.

Whenever there was a choice between music and anything else, music won hands down every time.

Hills are terrific for running

As Beverly Hills becomes more Iranian-Jewish, it is becoming politically conservative.

But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.

Nothing really happened – I was elected in ’86 – until 1992, and that’s when the Anita Hill debacle happened.