I don't know what the problem with Capitol is. Some one's got to wake 'em up. Prod 'em a little bit.

Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.

You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

Any good music must be an innovation.

I've been down there 6 times and there's nothing like Brazilian percussion.

I don't think the record company is aware of it. Because they just bury my albums and don't release them.

I love doing concert music.

That was when the Spanish came in and conquered the Aztecs. I thought that was a clever thing.

I write emotional music.

I was working all the time I was in college. I was working so much that I could hardly do my college work.

I don't know what the problem with Capitol is. Some one's got to wake 'em up. Prod 'em a little bit.

I did the Broadway album unfortunately in a year when there were no hits.

In a sense, a hit belongs to the person who made it popular, but if a tune is good enough to attain tremendous success, then it certainly deserves more than one version, one treatment, one approach.

I aim my arrangements at what will fit and colorfully frame the song in the best way possible.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

Well, that's the secret of commerciality, a simple style and you stick with it.

I don't try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.

My experience tells me, unfortunately, that so many people ask the question about 'The Smiths' reforming without really caring about the answer. They just really want to ask the question.

My parents were exactly like millions of other Americans who had a fire in their belly to build something of their own, and in so doing they exemplified the dignity of work, the opportunity available in this great nation to those willing to work, and they left the world a bit better than it was when they first showed up.

Architecture is supposed to complete nature. Great architecture makes nature more beautiful it gives it power.

If Iraq had succeeded in spray-drying anthrax spores to extend their life and lethality, that would have been among the most important secrets of its wide-ranging weapons program.

These protesters, opposing me or our church, they're protesting the eternal Word of God, and guess what - they're not going to be successful in toppling the Word of God.

I don't know if nature is a direct literary influence on my writing, but it is certainly important to me. I take great joy in writing about it. It is something I have taken with me from my childhood; the body exposed to the threat of the physical world and at the same time being at home in it.

There was a note on my dressing room table that said, Call Neil Young.

Every Brit I met had the best sense of humor. They're hilarious: very dry and witty.

Clinton's hands remain incredibly clean, don't they, and Tony Blair's smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt.

I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up.

The fact is I like Mumbai less and less. My son says, 'Baba, let's go for a drive', and I tell him, 'Where's the fun of a drive in this place?' You get caught in a million traffic jams, and you spend time cooped in your car with all that mad cacophony around you.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don't have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

I love the idea of making images of the parts of the body that we all have but that no one pays attention to, like the soft area underneath your nose.

I think sometimes if you are alone, you are freer because your time is your own.

It's a strange failure of the literary world that Updike never quite received his due. Despite winning two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards and countless other awards and honours, he was denied the Nobel.

I'm very grateful for the way things have panned out. If I hadn't had a struggle at the start, I wouldn't be able to appreciate every single day in this job. Whether you love or hate a job, you can't waste the chance to do something with it.

When I started, I knew I didn't fit any visual that anyone was going to lie down and take their clothes off about. Work doesn't come to me; I go out and look for it.

Being nerdy just means being passionate about something including everyone the coolest people on Earth are passionate and therefore nerdy about something whatever it is whether its sports or gaming or technology or fashion or beauty or food or whatever.

Horses are predictably unpredictable.

I love making healthy lean foods delicious - that's an art!

The Holocaust of Nazi Germany is certainly no less of a historic crime than the Holocaust that went on for centuries against African-Americans. That process of reparations, and a truth and reconciliation discussion, was extremely helpful in the country of Germany, and we need to have that here.

The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places?

I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there.

I think education is one of the greatest tools for most kids not only to expand their book knowledge, but their ability to experience new things - I think it opens more doors than any other experience I can think of.