Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.
Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level. 
I quit college and neglected to tell my dad.
Tom would bring in songs, Mike would engineer, and we recorded about 30 songs.
Besides, I'm fairly incompetent. I can't play that fast.
I'm not the best singer, but I like the way I sing my songs. 
Bob Dylan's not a hype and a haircut: he's the real thing. 
I loved Mal Evans holding one note down on You Won't See Me from Rubber Soul. 
I was just writing songs because, if a song shows up, you've gotta write it. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have any faith in my voice. 
The idea that I could write songs that people wanted to hear came from other people who said they liked what I did. 
There was a period when I wrote in Nashville for Maverick and then Warner/Chappell, and it was interesting. 
I've spent most of my life playing with Tom Petty, and he's a damn good songwriter. 
If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that's the cardinal sin. 
I've always written songs since I was a kid - always. 
Sometimes you work with somebody you've never heard of because you just feel like working. 