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.

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Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.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

I was surprised that the TV series was popular itself, but after that it went on to become more popular over the years and thus it seemed eventually that they would turn it into a movie.

Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.

Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.

The reason it has relevance is because I, as a popular Arab personality - the Arab people like me and respect me - thought it was time for me to make an ever so tiny statement about what I thought about this whole thing.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

I've been amazed that it's so popular with people. But it's been fantastic. People are very excited when I walk into a place and they recognize me from the series.

The Smithsonian Institute is one of the most popular agencies of government in the United States.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.

My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.

In a strange kind of way I know were really popular and probably the biggest band in the country at the moment, but at the same time there is this real cult thing going on.

The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.

When I go to Japan and do shows I play for 1,000 to 1,500 people. I like a lot about Japan. Their popular culture and mass commercialization appeals to me.

The way I see it, all the popular singers are strippers.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

Video games are so popular these days, getting the opportunity to star in one is something special. More people should do it.

And we just went with Julie because that name hadn't been used in any other popular songs at the time.

I'd like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can't make anybody believe that he has it.

There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.

This whole fuss did not only damage Fischer's image, but that of the USA as well. The way the Americans treated one of their most popular citizens did not make a positive impression worldwide.

I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers' councils, people's councils, call them what you want, popular committees.

Sylvester has a great popular sense, as good as any writer I've ever worked with. He knows what audiences want to see, and what they don't want to see.

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

I've had some movies that have been ridiculed, but that's OK with me. I don't feel that really defines me. Should I change who I am to be popular?

I thought that that was an effort to inject a popular element, a democratic element into the selection of a person who, once he is selected and confirmed, is beyond electoral control.