My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

And do respect the women of the world; remember you all had mothers.

As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.

As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.

To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.

When you're playing live, those people who you're trying to please and reach, they're right there giving you feedback. And you don't get that feedback in the studio.

To travel and to get around different places, especially in station wagons, you could really see America.

I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.

Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.

Never see yourself as being superior to others

Find beauty in the madness.

To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.

A friend is as it were a second self.

Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of mankind

I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism.

Our world is obsessed with success. But how does God define success? Success in God's eyes is faithfulness to His calling.

Anonymity is an abused privilege, abused most by people who mistake vitriol for wisdom and cynicism for wit.

The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.

All I'm saying is that Louis Vuitton and L'Oreal didn't invent branding at some point in the mid-Eighties. Big, reassuring names have been around a long time.