Top 35 Neil Sedaka Quotes

I am a Jew, and I’m convinced that Israel is the homeland.

I used to think the whole world was Jewish.

I have inner peace; I have accomplished a great deal.

I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.

The hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ is so inspirational – I wish I’d written it.

As far as I’m concerned, all politicians are fake people.

There have been 700 or 800 songs I’ve written over the last 60 years, as I went through different periods of writing. I listen and marvel at how different they are and how they still stand up. They are very well done, if I must say so.

People seem to think of me as a goody-goody who never curses, but I can be very nasty if I’m pushed. Cross me too many times, and I’ll never talk to you again.

Andy Warhol was a good friend of mine. We used to go to the Studio 54 nightclub together with the likes of Liza Minnelli, and we’d dance through the night.

America has a tendency to chip away at you if you’ve been a success for a long time, whereas in Europe, they put you on a pedestal.

My music is nostalgic. The early Neil Sedaka songs are always catchy and very singable.

Music is so much a part of me: my parents told me that when I was an infant, I wouldn’t eat unless the radio was playing music.

I could have been bigger, but I wasn’t controversial enough. I didn’t do drugs or wreck rooms. There were no dramas in my private life.

I was driving my 1959 Chevy Impala down King’s Highway in Brooklyn with the top down, and I heard ‘Oh! Carol’ on three stations at the same time while I was channel surfing. I knew then that I made it.

I think I was put on earth to sing and play music.

Between 1963 and 1975, I worked very little. The Beatles had come to New York and changed music – all the solo singers were out of work.

I love America, and parts of New Jersey remind me of Newfoundland – rolling hills and gardens – it’s great! I guess that’s why they call it the Garden State.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, ‘Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.’ But I’ve been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

I have written for, very fortunately, some great singers from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley.

I was a teenage idol, but not the one that the girls would put up on their walls, like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. I was more cerebral, like a Roy Orbison or a Buddy Holly. I was one of the few who could write songs.

I rode on a plane a couple years ago with Snow Patrol and didn’t know who the hell they were. They said they were big fans of mine and were playing Madison Square Garden. And they let me listen to one of their records on their iPod. I started to weep.

I was from very poor people: 11 of us in a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. I wanted the large houses, the cars, jets, and yacht.

I’m not afraid of poking fun at myself.

I knew I had a remarkable voice, but I was embarrassed because it was so high. But when I sang at my bar mitzvah, the rabbi was in tears. He said to my parents, ‘He must become a cantor in the synagogue,’ but my mother said, ‘No, he’s going to be a concert pianist.’

I’ve always enjoyed seeing the world through the eyes of my grandchildren.

My teachers said, ‘Always keep a Beethoven sonata under your fingers.’ I always have. I still play chamber music, and I always play classical.

‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ was a combination of three different singing styles – Al Green, the Beach Boys, and Diana Ross. I loved all these people, and I put their singing styles together and wrote that tune.

Much of my music is inspired by what I heard at picnics and weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Being a New Yorker, I used to dance to Latin music. There was a place called the Palladium on Broadway. And Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez used to play. So I still have that in my blood.

I was one of the first American rock n’ rollers in the ’50s to go to many foreign countries. It’s a wonderful thing to go out and spread joy and love rather than hate.

I have a Baldwin in my L.A. apartment, a Steinway in my New York apartment, and a Kawai plexiglass grand piano in storage for shows. I still play for two or three hours every day.

I think there are three kinds of songs; it’s only my theory: psychological, emotional, and spiritual. When you write psychologically or intellectually, you have a tune in your mind, and you re-write it. It’s an intellectual approach. The emotional is my favorite because it comes from my kishkas; it comes from my soul.

These are some of my awards – an Ivor Novello, a Variety Club Silver Heart, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I also have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame and a street named after me in Brooklyn where I used to live.

I didn’t want to be a rock and roller. I wanted to be a Bobby Darin because he was the epitome of the performer, the sophisticated.

I still play my old vinyl LPs – I like the scratches – and I miss browsing in record shops, because they held great nostalgia for me.