As long as my body holds out, I'll be grooving when I'm 70, and not some sort of horrible spectacle.

Be a military flier or be in a band; those were the two hippest things I could imagine.

Elvis Costello had a brand new bag. He was a musician, but he knew all about the attitude part of it.

I like being a big fish in a small pond. I'm not interested in a huge audience because it brings headaches.

I work very hard on getting the songs as direct and examined as I can before I go in the studio.

I'm playing to the sort of people who like the same records.

If anyone comes along, I'm more than happy to welcome them, but I'm not interested in world domination.

In the '70s, you had to come up with an album every year whether you were ready or not.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

They tell me I produced songs. I just stood in the back, wore a good suit and said, Yeah, that's happening.

When punk rock came along, the one thing you were not supposed to be was musical.

When somebody like Elvis Costello comes along, anybody can make a good record with him.

You've got to really know your song, inside and out.

All those years we'd spent learning these chops, and all those gigs in Germany where you'd play all night, and along comes punk. It has nothing to do with that. A lot of people went out of business.

Going to Nashville to meet the in-laws was the first time when I'd been in America and not been seen as some sort of eccentric character with a cute accent.

I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.

If a hit came along, I wouldn't be unhappy about that. But I'm a bit too old for that now-doing videos and all those types of TV shows. I've kind of done all that, in the '70s.

The world is full of musicians who can play great, and you wouldn't cross the road to see them. It's people who have this indefinable attitude that are the good ones.

These days, rock 'n' roll is much more about rock than about roll. I don't do rock. But I'm interested in that roll part, because that's the funny little bit that makes it hip.