Bands always call me when they are in need of a boost and I come in and put them back on top.

With Sumthin Else Music Works, I wanted to spread the love and give newcomers a chance to make it because something that really helped me were all the people who had given me an opportunity when I was putting my career together.

You can fool a person into going to see a movie with a good trailer.

Any real record person knows that the number one most powerful marketing tool when it comes to music is repetition.

Music is the one part of the entertainment business where you can't fool anybody into buying a record.

Bands always call me when they are in need of a boost and I come in and put them back on top.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair.

Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different.

I think the hardest thing to overcome is judging yourself and being your own worst critic so to speak.

Every record I have done was because I was a person's friend. The only time we did not continue to be friends was if the record did not become a hit. If it did, we became great friends.

I am very rich because of 'Chic' - artistically as well as spiritually. It's been an amazing life.

I used to play flute and clarinet at school, and although I wasn't thinking about making a living or getting a pay cheque, I already knew I was going to play music all my life.

I wouldn't know how to retire.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

I'm always swimming forward like a shark. You just keep going and you don't rest. I love waking up knowing that I have a problem to solve.

I'm always the last person in the world who would ever try to predict a trend.

I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.

I've had insomnia since I was five years old. I just don't require much sleep. I'm never tired.

It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

My life was really interesting before 'Chic.'

Nobody under the sun was like Madonna. She was positive and clear and wholly dedicated to achieving everything that she's achieved.

The only person I have regrets about is Miles Davis. He and I had become good friends after we did a photo shoot, and coincidentally, we kept running into each other at parties and stuff. I regret not having written a hit for Miles Davis.

There's never been a song that I just wrote and tried to send to an artist.

Trust me, the only real way to understand 'Chic' is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early 'Chic' records to impress my jazz friends.

My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day.

Writing is like mining for gold hidden in the hillsides of your mind.

Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

The box jellyfish takes you into an area of what I'd call science fiction. You feel like you've been dipped in hot burning oil. You burst into flames.

The greatest stimulator of my running career was fear.

I think my imagination dictates the technologies I use. But at the same time, my imagination can be technologic. Sometimes I see a tool and I know immediately how to use it, but most of the time I use the tool for an idea I already have.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.

I would, if checking boxes in a questionnaire, say I would oppose abortion except when the life of the mother is in danger.

I don't really call myself a composer.

Believing takes practice.

I'm not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it's a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Our real work is prayer. What good is the cold iron of our frantic little efforts unless first we heat it in the furnace of our prayer? Only heat will diffuse heat.

I love traveling and touring, but I have to bring the little things that make me feel at home.

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

I'm a creator at heart.

Some things that are invisible and untouchable can nevertheless be seen and felt.

A soul mate is one with whom you have a graceful affinity and while allures, too profound to value as anything more than chance. They may reappear from time to time as a delusion when indeed they are reality.

Discretion is the salt and fancy the sugar of life the one preserves the other sweetens it.

At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall.

We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.