“The only music I don’t like is bad music.”

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

I look back and say, “This must have been somebody else.” I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

Excellence isn’t an act, it’s a habit.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Editing while you’re writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that’s the bottom line.

When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.

I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it.

You cannot get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F.

My son is a hip-hop producer.

It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

The relationship with a producer and an artist is really special. It’s got to be love and respect, amazing mutual respect for each other, because that’s what makes a good record.

I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.

Bad decisions, good intentions.

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

Everything looks bad if you remember it.

Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you’ve had a bunch of bad days and there’s different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.

Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.

Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.