Play quotes
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"Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?"
"Jazz is a big thing with me. It's a very big passion of mine, to play it. I'm an amateur musician and I love everything about it. I was obsessed with jazz when I was 15 years old and I know a lot about it because I've loved it so much."
"As I've gotten older, the parts have diminished. I liked it when I was younger, I could always play the lead in the movie and I could do all the romantic scenes with the women, and it was fun and I liked to play that. Now, I'm older and I'm reduced to playing the backstage doorman or the uncle or something. I don't really love that so occasionally, when a part comes up, I'll play it."
"I have fun. I enjoy my life. And I was hardwired for a deep connection between service, God, and happiness. You kind of need all of those things to be in play for one to have the others."
"Coming out with records when you're in a big, successful group that plays stadiums, that's scary to come out by yourself."
"I'm totally sick of hotels. I'm totally sick of room service. I'm totally sick of how can I help you ma'am? I just want to go home and wash some dishes, play with my cat, watch some TV."
"If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President."
"If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over."
"I like [George] Benson because I just like it. I like that kind of style. I don't like the broken up kind of style. I don't like where you play for 16 bars and then break it up into what somebody's version of what birds twittering sounds like, or what the sound of the city is, or what New York sounds like."
"There aren't any labels - all jazz means is improvization and you can never play a tune the same way twice. So jazz spills over into everything."
"The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from."
"We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same."
"You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough."
"Performance art is going to be the future. Plays on Broadway are so restricted. But performance art is like haikus, just one line thing. And it's more casual but more interesting."
"The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper."
"The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home, I play the piano and make them on the piano."
"A lot of times when you play... you get this adrenalin that blocks pain."
"If I don't wear something I feel confident in, I don't play as well."
"The thing is, it's not good anyway for eight-year-olds to be out there playing tennis tournaments so soon in their lives. But when I did get to play in a tournament, when I was nine, I was overjoyed."
"If Id lived prior to the 1980s, it would have been different, because I would have been playing to prove African Americans are equal. Now, I dont necessarily feel I have to play for black people, because obviously theyre doing everything in all sports. If I can go out there and play for myself and not feel I have to stand for something other than what I want to do, thats good."
