- A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
- The groovy thing about pop music is that it's wide open. Anything can happen.
- It's hard to be married to someone in the business. Carole Bayer Sager and I wrote some really good songs - we had three No 1 hits together. But I think you have to be grown-up, and I don't think I've been particularly grown-up in some of these marriages that I've had.
- Elvis Costello is a good guy. He is very intense. When we were working on 'Painted from Memory,' I could always bet that at 2.30am, if I was up and thinking about something, then he'd be up and thinking about the same thing, too.
- I've written some really bad songs, which you'll never hear. An example? 'Underneath the Overpass.'
- They put a label on my music. They called it 'easy listening'. I don't think my songs are easy listening. I don't think 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' is easy listening.
- I'm very lucky that so many of the songs I wrote were written at the time they were. A good song is still a good song, it's just so much harder now to make it exist and last. Do you go into a piano bar and hear a song by 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys? Is there anyone covering songs from Spring Awakening [the alt-rock musical]?
- I never did much of the drugs, y'know? Although I did used to like a Jack Daniel's. These days, it's just a glass of wine with dinner.
- Brian Wilson's brilliant but really lucky to be all together, to be able to perform. In fact I think it's miraculous.
- I'm very appreciative of the way I'm appreciated in various parts of the world. But I have trouble retaining the high. You finish a concert; it's been good. People backstage tell you how great you are, tell you stories about how this song or that song changed their life, then you go back to your hotel; you switch on the television set, and . . . you're alone. When I lived in Santa Monica with Jane, it was always kind of a downer coming off the road. She'd say to me: 'You're Santa Monica Burt now. Santa Monica Burt doesn't get a standing ovation every time he walks down Main Street'.
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