The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

I was coerced into taking piano lessons in the early '50s. It was a quite unpleasant experience.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

I saw Suicide in '74 and it was pretty horrifying.

Even by the time I was four or five, I had Gene Autry records.

Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics.

The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with.

By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.

I really feel fortunate to have been around then because there have been good and bad years in rock but the best years were '55 to early '61. I got to see Buddy Holly and everybody else.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

From '69 til '76, I never played in public. I would play by myself at home.

Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

I never really followed grunge.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

I quit the tax job then and decided that I was going to play in a band. I answered ads in the Village Voice and went through two days of auditioning for bands.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

When I heard his first songs, Dylan was answering certain questions that I had all my life been asking myself.

The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

All my songs are where I am.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

We would turn everything into songs in those days.

Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

I had deeper, more reflective songs on the first album.

I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible.

The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true.

I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.

We had been working. We had a bunch of songs written and it came time to make the record, so we had our lawyer make the call to Elektra and ask for our advance. Then, we got dropped. It was actually exciting.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

I remembered their songs but I had never owned a Beatles album.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.