I think I drift toward sad love songs.

If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that's the cardinal sin.

Sometimes you work with somebody you've never heard of because you just feel like working.

I loved Mal Evans holding one note down on You Won't See Me from Rubber Soul.

I got to play on a couple of records with the Rolling Stones, and that was really special to me.

I'm playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there's Howie. Tom's in the middle and we're playing all this stuff I love. It's great.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.

I try to find little things that you can do to move the song along and things that serve the song.

I think we've always been better live.

Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.

Every collection that I work on, I always think, Is this cool enough to wear to a concert?

“To think the way you do,” he said smiling, “you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.” “On both, perhaps.”

Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience.

I am one of those people who deeply resents not having been born in the 19th century, when there were still open places to explore.

I also find doing the mundane, everyday things in life has a calming, creative influence on me. Some of my best ideas come when I'm vacuuming or waiting in lines.

You never replace a great scholar who retires. If you try to do that, you end up with burnt-out volcanoes.

You know, my movies are important on an economic basis, on an artistic basis.

Whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.

Nothing's dangerous if you know what you're doing.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.