Walter Becker

“Our audience, such as it is, has been very loyal.”

“We played the songs, but the songs were what we were. They were the most important thing.”

“I'm not a jazz purist. I'm a purist about things that are good.”

“Perfectionism is a disease, but it's a good disease for a musician to have.”

“It's an act of desperation that I play the guitar.”

“Anything that's successful is going to be imitated.”

“The lyrics are the last thing to go in. It’s a bit like doing a crossword puzzle.”

“Donald and I have a working method that is based on arguing.”

“We just wanted to make records that sounded good to us.”

“The way we made records was that every part had to be the best part it could be.”

“I think that probably the most important thing is that you have to have a sense of humor.”

“You start with an idea, and it's a very fragile thing.”

“We never wanted to be a band that had a hit and then faded away.”

“I think one of the things about our music is that it’s not for everybody.”

“We were working on something that was a blend of a lot of things that we liked, and we were making it up as we went along.”

“We had the great good fortune to have a record company that didn't know what we were doing.”