“It was 22 years of work in a row, right up until 1987. Twenty-two years in a row-either on tour, writing an album, or recording an album. It wasn’t until 1987 that I was able to take a breath.”

I’ve never been unhappy with Capitol. Not really. They’ve been really good by me.

They do respect her but, they love to watch her strut.

The years rolled slowly past and I found myself alone. Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends, I found myself further and further from my home.

Every now and then you’ll nail one that’s really, really special. And that’s what you live for.

With only one thing in common, they got the fire down below.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I’m playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

He wants his home and security, he wants to live like a sailor at sea.

One victim lives in tragedy, another victim stops to stare, and still another walks on by pretending not to see

And you pretend it doesn’t bother you, When you just want to explode.

The two hours onstage is great. But I can only play a show and then take a night off. I have to sing for two hours, and then I’ve gotta rest it for a night. So it’s the other 46 hours that are just boring as heck.

Sometimes you can hear them talk, other times you can’t. All the same old cliches, is that a woman or a man?

I’m older now but still running against the wind

You go to LA, or you go to New York, and it’s really fun to go there. But they’re not grounded. Everybody is just competing all the time for the limelight. It’s too much entertainment industry. There are too many choices. And it’s distracting to me.

I’d rather make music than tour.

Tell them we’ll be dancing, dancing ’til we drop, it’s time to get down and do the Horizontal Bop.

It went on yesterday and it’s going on tonight, somewhere there’s somebody ain’t treatin’ somebody right.

I have not released large orchestral works as recordings because it hasn’t been within the realm of possibility.

A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

When I’m recording my album, I want to be acting, or when I’m on set, I want to be making music.

Every free day, every weekend, I am in a recording session. I’m very lucky to have such supportive people around me.

Hitler’s vast propaganda successes were accomplished with little more than the radio and loudspeaker, and without TV and tape and video recording . . . Today the art of mind control is in the process of becoming a science.

I like traditional music. I listen to a lot of it. There is no particular reason to present these recordings.

By the time I’m in the studio recording my parody, 10,000 parodies of that song are on YouTube.

Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists.