“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.”

Keep your family and old friends around you. That’s what I had done and that’s what saved my life when it came to being famous.

Everything you say and do is having an impact on others.

We’ve made mistakes, But we’ve made good friends too. Remember all the nights we spent with them? And all our plans, Who says they can’t come true? Tonight’s another chance to start again. It’s just another New Year’s Eve, Another night like all the rest.

I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive…And since I’m a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

I’ve been up, down, trying to get the feeling again. All around, trying to get the feeling again. The one that makes me shiver, made my knees start to quiver.

You know, when I did ‘American Idol’ the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.

For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

Fame is always a shock to the system; there’s no school to go to, there are no books to read, and when it hits you, it’s a surprise. You could be working for 10, 20 years and when it finally hits you, you get knocked down.

I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn’t even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.

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.

You say something stupid and the next morning you’re in the headlines.

My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that’s actually happening.

You can’t possibly prepare for what happens to you the day you hit No. 1 and people treat you differently.

I think the people who are out there for fame get themselves in a lot of trouble.

There’s just no quiet in Vegas.

I was always into the music. Music, in general, saved my life. But the fame part… I would look up, see what was going on around me, the reporters and photographers and all, and then I would just go back to making my music.

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.