I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

I'm not one of those people who says, 'I never read reviews,' because I don't believe those people.

I have always thought of music as a highway with many lanes.

I still have great faith in what is good and right in all of us.

My whole thing is not just to play music for people, but to make them part of the evening.

There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests

You mustn't underestimate an audience's intelligence.

The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

My show business career doesn't mean I can't write a symphony. It just means I was never asked to write one.

I can make a song up about anything: garbage, the weather, things in the news.

No tears are wasted. It is deepest soul soothing.

The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity.

It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors.

When everyone agrees, someone is not thinking.

Any organisation has a future, provided it is properly led and it sticks to the objective of that organisation.

Fear is vision without hope.

Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

You can find that sort of regularity in Stock Exchange quotations.

Has the pope questioned the faith of any communist leaders? He spends a lot of time in communist countries.

The biggest religious wars and persecutions in history occur when religions, each claiming their own absolute truths, come into conflict.