I say sorry to my wife about five times a day for various reasons.
I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way,' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience, but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.
Well, I'm an optimist.
I get terrible reviews everywhere I go.
I'm a huge Freddie Mercury fan. I think he was the end-all. I love his lack of inhibition, his talent, the chances he took. He made mistakes on his records, and he didn't care.
Well, my dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years.
A lot of the music that you listen to now is because of the things that the Meters did, the Neville Brothers did, and they're there, the guys who invented those beats that the guys sample today. Such an enormous opportunity.
My life is spontaneous and things just kind of happen.
I have those dreams that you can't put into words.
'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.
I don't really find girls to be any more dramatic or delicate than boys; I've known plenty of little boys who've had miserable breakdowns over things... in fact, I was one of them!
I'm not a movie star. People know me, but they don't necessarily know what they know me for. I get recognised, but it's not like Justin Bieber. It's a nice thing, people are cool.
My dad and mom believed that you do what you have to do in private and don't make a big deal out of it. Just try to help people as much as you can.
I never dated much.
You know what's funny? I don't ever feel the need to escape. I have a strong marriage. I like my life. You hear about these guys having midlife crises - I don't see that happening to me.
When I did the album for 'When Harry Met Sally,' I found myself out there in front of this big band, which I had no idea how to do, and they wiped the floor with me. It's a very specific skill, and I didn't know how to do it.
I only tour in short bursts, I'm only ever away from my family and three daughters for a month or two.
Everything I do is part of my passion. I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby. I love to play piano, sing, and act. I love to do all those things.
I like my life.
All the satisfaction I need... comes when I step out onstage and see the people. That's awesome. I love that.
Not everybody gets to record with an orchestra, and not everybody that gets to record with an orchestra gets to write all their own stuff.
Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.
There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.
I have a big ego, and I'm a confident person, but when it comes down to being a jerk, that doesn't work for me, I tried it... for about ten years.
I don't want to say the same lines every night.
My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person.
Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time.
I'm not a big goal guy.
My Dad is my hero. He's 85 now and he is in great health. He is handsome and strong. He has an incredible moral and ethical backbone. I couldn't have been luckier with my parents.
There are people who can't stand me, they say, 'God, he makes me sick', or, 'He's creepy', but it doesn't affect me too badly.
Everything that I have professionally, and so much of what I have personally, is because of this great, fair city, and to see it being drowned like this is almost unbearable.
Golf is good, it means I get some fresh air and exercise, take my mind off work and see some of the landscape of the place I'm visiting.
I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby.
The two are unrelated. I'm not into turtles or space stuff.
You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.
Sometimes you try a song and people don't respond, or you tell a story and you just hear crickets. But when you play thousands of shows, you start to refine stuff.
I was raised in the environment where it really wasn't about sittin' around dreaming all the time, it was about practicing and workin' really hard and if a dream ever came to you, you'd be prepared for that opportunity.
I guess play piano, you know, because that's the thing I started doing when I was a little kid.
I live in Connecticut, but eventually I'd like to move back to New Orleans. I grew up there; the pace is a bit slower. Plus, I love crawfish and po'boys.
I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.
I just liked the feeling of being on stage.
The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now, whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers, I would have got into a whole load of trouble.
You hear about these guys having midlife crises - I don't see that happening to me.
I mean these people who work on Broadway, in my opinion, are the most gifted of everyone. I mean they really know how to dance. They really know how to act. They really know how to sing. They know how to perform.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.
I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.
There's an album by Antonio Carlos Jobim - the album with 'The Girl From Ipanema.' That's the most seductive music ever.
Before I had kids I'd go out on the road for months and months at a time, but now I don't think I'd want to do that anymore, because I'd miss too much time at home, so it's just a matter of monitoring how much work that I do and how much time I'm on the road.
