Quotes from Nile Rodgers

I wouldn't know how to retire.

It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.

There's never been a song that I just wrote and tried to send to an artist.

I'm always swimming forward like a shark. You just keep going and you don't rest. I love waking up knowing that I have a problem to solve.

My life was really interesting before 'Chic.'

After waiting four long years since the Lost CHIC Tapes were recovered, I'm finally putting out our first record. I'm like a child waiting for Christmas morning.

What do great artists do when you see a world around you that's in turmoil? Some of the best artists make you feel good (hah), they look to the future.

Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

I used to play flute and clarinet at school, and although I wasn't thinking about making a living or getting a pay cheque, I already knew I was going to play music all my life.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

I've found great solace in finally taking care of myself and others.

Artists don't come much cooler and well rounded than Lady Gaga. Love and respect.

When people tell you you're on the brink of death, you've got to dig pretty deep to get it together.

Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.

I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.

Nobody under the sun was like Madonna. She was positive and clear and wholly dedicated to achieving everything that she's achieved.

There's been this strange irony to my whole life. All my original bandmates have died, when I was the most wild and most reckless of us all. But I'm still here.

Music is the one part of the entertainment business where you can't fool anybody into buying a record.

My career has been wacky and not at all normal. I've never had a manager, nobody gets jobs for me. I wind up working with artists that I meet.

I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.

I never wished my parents were normal, because they were unique, special and fabulous.

Everything about my life was culturally rich, and all the people I met sort of reinforced the wackiness that was normally inside of me. No one said, 'You can't do that,' until I got to real record companies, that is.

My responsibility is to the artist first. There's something that artists intrinsically know about their music and their fanbase that neither the record company nor the producer really knows.