You hope that your teenage self would like and forgive your 50-year-old self.

The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.

I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can't go back. You cannot go back.

I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that's not the conventional definition of hiding.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire.

Every record I have done was because I was a person's friend. The only time we did not continue to be friends was if the record did not become a hit. If it did, we became great friends.

People talk, 'Oh your father's a misogynist, look what he said about women,' like, on 'Howard Stern.' When he gets with Howard Stern, who's a friend of his, he'll joke around, because it's a comedy show. He's allowed to have a personality.

To establish personal relationships with the people you work with is stupid, because you never know when the winds will change. I try not to get too close to people.