42 Quotes by Donald Fagen

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

I've never been comfortable as a lead performer, and I never wanted to be a singer, particularly.

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

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.

September 11, on a global scale, and my mother dying, on a personal level, were the two major things that got me thinking about all of this.

Mortality! It's intimations of mortality. I'm 58, and by that time, more people you know have died. My mother died a few years ago. And being a New Yorker, 9/11 had a lot to do with the mood of the city.

That was one of the elements. Just getting older and also I'm a New Yorker, so 9-11 on a broader level had something to do with it. I work as I go so I have a file of things that go back a few years and I think probably the last Steely Dan album, (2003's) Everything Must Go, had some things on this theme, too. But this is on a more personal level.

It's great to know that our old stuff still sounds good to our fans, just as it's wonderful to think that we've turned a few people on to jazz over the years.

I don't think you can escape the environment we live in now.