Having in my life been bitten by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.

Every songwriter lives to have at least one song that a cab driver who asks 'You write anything I know?' will recognize.

I don't want to own her, but I can't let her have it both ways. There is one too many of us.

If you like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape, you're the love that I've looked for, come with me and escape.

Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I'm not much into health food, I am into Champagne.

I think writing for a world one has invented can be infinitely more interesting than writing for the world we've all inherited.

I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything.

I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long, like a worn-out recording of a favorite song.

A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.

I first had the thought about making a musical of 'Edwin Drood' as far back as 1971.

In all my years of performing, no audience member has ever actually assaulted me. I consider this to be the singular triumph of my performing career.

Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.

People have thoughts they’d sooner not have. It happens in life.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

I get up every day and work, regardless of if I have a job or not.

Even if something within me is ugly, writing is a pretty good place to play with that thing and to begin to really see it.

If we only knew how many times our seemingly clever comment cut straight into the heart of the person with whom we have just spoken, it is we who would bleed.

How many miles to Babylon? Three-score and ten. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes, there and back again. If your heels are nimble and light, You will get there by candle-light

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn't appreciate and value you.

I know of no place where the wind can be as icy and the damp so penetrating as in Oxford round about Easter time.