If you have a passion for something, never be discouraged by anyone.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

My music is nostalgic. The early Neil Sedaka songs are always catchy and very singable.

Howie Greenfield and I started writing music when I was 13 and he was 16. We lived in the same building.

I did have my beginnings in doo-wop music; I had a group called the Tokens in Brooklyn. They went on, of course, to do 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and a lot of other great things. I went on as a soloist. But I still love doo-wop music.

I didn't want to be a rock and roller. I wanted to be a Bobby Darin because he was the epitome of the performer, the sophisticated.

You have to learn how to sing from your diaphragm, and you don't become a great performer overnight. It takes a while. The more you do it, the better you are.

I knew I had a remarkable voice, but I was embarrassed because it was so high. But when I sang at my bar mitzvah, the rabbi was in tears. He said to my parents, 'He must become a cantor in the synagogue,' but my mother said, 'No, he's going to be a concert pianist.'

I tend to be on the quiet side. I think I would have been bigger if I had a big mouth.

Tra-la-las and doo-be-do's became a Neil Sedaka trademark. I was the king of the tra-la-las and doo-be-do's in the '50s and '60s. But then when I re-recorded 'Breaking Up,' I started with a verse instead of the doo-be-do's!

'Love Will Keep Us Together' was a combination of three different singing styles - Al Green, the Beach Boys, and Diana Ross. I loved all these people, and I put their singing styles together and wrote that tune.

The hymn 'Amazing Grace' is so inspirational - I wish I'd written it.

As far as I'm concerned, all politicians are fake people.

I have written for, very fortunately, some great singers from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley.

I started out just as Elvis was going into the army, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 14-year-old cousin, and Little Richard became a priest.

I have a Baldwin in my L.A. apartment, a Steinway in my New York apartment, and a Kawai plexiglass grand piano in storage for shows. I still play for two or three hours every day.

My teachers said, 'Always keep a Beethoven sonata under your fingers.' I always have. I still play chamber music, and I always play classical.

I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.

I admire Gaga. She's very talented and wise, that girl.

I have inner peace; I have accomplished a great deal.

I was a teenage idol, but not the one that the girls would put up on their walls, like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. I was more cerebral, like a Roy Orbison or a Buddy Holly. I was one of the few who could write songs.

I am very proud of being Jewish.

I could have been bigger, but I wasn't controversial enough. I didn't do drugs or wreck rooms. There were no dramas in my private life.

I had talent, and I was hungry for fame, and you can't say I didn't get it.

The Apollo Theatre was a difficult audience, and if they didn't like you, they would let you know. Luckily, they liked me.

There have been 700 or 800 songs I've written over the last 60 years, as I went through different periods of writing. I listen and marvel at how different they are and how they still stand up. They are very well done, if I must say so.

I think there are three kinds of songs; it's only my theory: psychological, emotional, and spiritual. When you write psychologically or intellectually, you have a tune in your mind, and you re-write it. It's an intellectual approach. The emotional is my favorite because it comes from my kishkas; it comes from my soul.

The spiritual writing of the song is where you're chosen as a vehicle, and it comes from something up above. You don't move; it writes itself. It's very spooky, but that's happened to me just a few times.

Much of my music is inspired by what I heard at picnics and weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Music is so much a part of me: my parents told me that when I was an infant, I wouldn't eat unless the radio was playing music.

Between 1963 and 1975, I worked very little. The Beatles had come to New York and changed music - all the solo singers were out of work.