Let's kick the tires and light the fires, big daddy.

Well, my dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years.

I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby.

New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse...

With a tone so rich, I would never be afraid of the dark. Steinway is the only and the best!

There are people who can't stand me, they say, 'God, he makes me sick', or, 'He's creepy', but it doesn't affect me too badly.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

With imagination, I'll get there.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

Safety's just danger, out of place.

In my life I find that memories of the spirit linger and sweeten long after memories of the brain have faded.

The darkest clouds precipitate the most rain.

When I first saw Emma Stone, it was like I woke up.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

Sometimes I wish I could just wear the same thing every day. Cartoons do it. It’d make things a lot easier

Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots, I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better.

Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.

I was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it.

I love conventional apocalypse movies. In movies, I like to be with the President, or the scientist trying to solve the problem, but that's not the kind of fiction that I like to read.

You don't want to shock them and do something totally opposite, but you also want to play a different character.