The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

And do respect the women of the world; remember you all had mothers.

As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.

As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.

To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.

When you're playing live, those people who you're trying to please and reach, they're right there giving you feedback. And you don't get that feedback in the studio.

To travel and to get around different places, especially in station wagons, you could really see America.

I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.

Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

Day is just a collection of hours.

I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.

I always tell beginning runners: Train your brain first. It's much more important than your heart or legs.

Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.

I'm more of a visual person, but I think that reading's extremely important. But I'm very easily distracted. It takes certain books to really grab you in.

The most difficult thing about an easy match is to make a weak opponent play bad football.

The best competition I have is against myself to become better

In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are

The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn't true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife.