RANDY NEWMAN

I like science - geography, meteorology, cosmology.

I've worked with a band, and it's nice to have someone to travel around with, but I didn't like it as well on stage.

Most of my songs are about insensitivity of some kind.

My music has a high irritation factor. I've always tried to say something. Eccentric lyrics about eccentric people. Often it was a joke. But I would plead guilty on the grounds that I prefer eccentricity to the bland.

If we'd had another carefree 70's, I'd have been dead. It was a little too carefree, you know? I don't know how carefree they were for me, I think I was worried then, I can't remember what about.

It's funny; people get so doctrinaire about music. It should be the last thing you don't have an open mind about.

I've always had a lot of respect from the people I respected.

I think the tax cut is ridiculous but so am I.

I like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and destroying it essentially! I like the idea of bringing it down to earth a bit - and even a bit lower than that.

Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

I'm pretty proud of my film music in general.

'Rednecks' always made me nervous to play, but I'm glad I wrote it and I continue to play it. It's just that the language is so rough.

I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

Stay away from drugs. They're not worth it. I've tried, but there's none of them that's worth it.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

Mostly, I don't write overtly personal stuff.

But if you're doing something, show up everyday, and something good might happen - it's not going to happen if you don't show up.

Thank God for the potholes on memory lane.

I am not overlooking any mail. I'm looking at all of it. I even wrote back to the Viagra people.

But I don't want to sing everything out of the side of my mouth, I want people to understand what I mean.

I once had dinner with Madonna and I wasn't nervous but within about a minute I found myself talking about underwear.

I like Public Enemy a great deal.

It's very hard to get rich and famous at a young age and handle it well.