The problem is that for women, the average time is just over 14 minutes... men are left with about 12 minutes during which time they need to think of something to do!
Of course, we wrote the songs accordingly and performed and recorded them that way. At that time, we really thought it was right, but you know, seen in retrospect, it made the album sound forced, and not really great.
I was with somebody else at the time, who I left - one, because I didn't really want to be with that person, and two, because I felt I'd had so much tragedy I needed to go off, go crazy, and maybe live on the outside for a while.
You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.
I have not had a drink for four years, which for me is a long time.
In all known time there has never been a greater monster or miracle than the human being.
No time is better spent than that spent in the service of your fellow man.
From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto.
Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat.
I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.
I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.
I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.
I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.
I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.
Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.