Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I thought about the cameras following me in the terminal and pictured my family watching my entrance on TV. I hoped they’d be proud.

Chaos isn't good for your health.

In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it.

I've been to Chicago a lot - it's one of my favorite places. My wife is from Chicago, and I worked in the theater there a lot.

One reason writers write is out of revenge.

Christ died to save this lost world; he did not come to destroy, maim or pour out wrath.

I needed sleep. Big squishy bunches of it. Soon.

Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.

I originally wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but failed.