Billy Joel Quotes - Page 5

Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.

I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking "Uptown Girl!" I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called "Ragdoll," which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy.

I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.

I always wrote the music first, and the music gave me the mood and the lyrics were pretty much put in to give you a map, where that mood came from and where it's going. But my first love was really the music itself, and I guess I've gone back to that.

My daughter sent me on a mission to get as many autographs as possible.

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.

I may be an antique like the Stones, but antiques are valuable.

In hell there's a big hotel where the bar just closed and the windows never opened. No phone so you can't call home, and the TV works, but the clicker is broken.

Most people are satisfied with the junk food being sold as music.

There was an edge of, 'Go away kid, you're bothering me'. I've kicked myself a million times since. I could've discovered Whitney Houston.

Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania.

You can’t go the distance with too much resistance

I could walk away from anyone I ever knew, but I can't walk away from you.

You've got yoga, I've got beer. You got overpriced, I got weird.

...And you're the only one who knows.

I keep telling people: Don't make me the poster boy for AA because I don't know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

So I would choose to be with you, That's if the choice were mine to make, But you can make decisions too, And you can have this heart to break

I don't know why I go to extremes.

This is the time to remember cause it will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto cause we won't although we'll want to.

It's a little intimidating to walk into a studio and know that you're going to sing a duet with Barbra Streisand.

I'm single but interviewing.

And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts... Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they're for.

We drown our doubts in dry champagne and soothe our souls with fine cocaine. I don't know why I even care, we get so high and get nowhere.

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.