I started in the music business I was first introduced to 1650 Broadway, uh, which was in reality where everything happened in the '60s.

My influences were mostly gospel. So I was playing my twisted Jewish equivalent of gospel music over his twisted equivalent of rock and roll music. And it was a very excellent marriage.

Still being ambitious to want to play on the record, I was a mediocre keyboard player. And uh, I seized the opportunity and played the organ.

If you'd done a good job you'd just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go.

Only through sheer ambition did I end up playing on [Bob Dylan sessions] and the fact that I could do that is a testament to how disorganized it really was.

I liked being challenged by music. It's good for me.

...You couldn't help being influenced by Dylan.

I think it was Columbia politics, Columbia Records politics that, that, Tom Wilson left [Bob Dylan] after "Like A Rolling Stone".

Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.

Musically Bob [Dylan] is a primitive. He's not a Gershwin, or somebody that uses eloquent music terms.

Every now and then we could steal somebody else's stuff.

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.

You run the risk of falling on your face, but, again, music is an individual pursuit - it is made to please yourself first.

To have faith is to believe unconditionally.

I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to.

If we are negative by nature, we Americans are more human than most. The Founding Fathers loved going negative. Heck, the Declaration of Independence is one long negative ad.

Work should never make me weary If I'm really meant to do it, But it soon becomes exhausting If it's greed that drives me to it.

Sometimes we can only find ourselves by first losing ourselves.

I hear these people saying [Barack Obama]'s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it's crazy.

If you look at the Bible as a whole, it's redemptive and beautiful, and it's God's love story to mankind.

When I meet a beautiful girl, the first thing I say is 'will you marry me?'. The second thing I say is, 'how do you do?'