Quotes from Donald Fagen

Popularity has everything to do with business and nothing to do with music.

Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist - anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.

I have a critical nature, in the sense that when I look at something I often look for the flaws.

Randy Newman seemed like an even worse singer than me. I liked Ray Charles, Levi Stubbs, Jack Jones, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett.

My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players.

What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free

I think of Steely Dan as being of its time, and it may be inseparable from its time.

When you get a groove going, time flies.

What do you do with what you're given, and how do you transform it into something worthwhile?

I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.

My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs.

We're not getting any younger.

I had trouble distinguishing art from life. I don't now, and I feel much better!

We don't think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it's more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK.