“If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don't always last. Maybe I'm a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can't believe it.”

“'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. 'Kansas City' was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.”