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.

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.

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.

The [Bob] Dylan sessions were very disorganized, to say the least. I mean, the "Like A Rolling Stone" session I was invited by the producer to watch.

I didn't know love could leave the lights on all the time.

I believe that hope, imagination, and dreams create our destiny.

You know…it always seems obvious to outsiders when someone is doing something wrong, but when your mind is in the midst of evil, it is easy to be manipulated by crueller instincts.

You will either have value, or be grist for the mill — nothing more.

A prostitute is a decent worker like the rest of us, only she can’t fake what she is doing.

That freedom that Picasso afforded himself, to be an artist in a huge number of ways, seems to be a huge psychological liberation.

Quiet, deep breath after any prayer is another form of Amen.

In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

Each moment in time we have it all, even when we think we don't.