You get tired of dealing with how other people think of what you're doing. It finally gets to the point where you realize that if you're going to do … - Clare Fischer

I'm a writer who plays the piano. As I write, I find new things I like. I make them into what I call principles, and they become part of my playing vocabulary. That's the secret of what you get from composing. You get to discover things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. Much like a speech pattern, your improvisation patterns can get stale if you don't keep building your vocabulary. Each time you re voice something, you change the sound. When you do this enough, you get used to those sounds, and they start to come out as you play. You end up using voicings that aren't common, which gives you an auditory identity.

You have to recognize those writers who are artists in the same sense as the musicians. “Catching colds and missing trains.” Man, I wish I could say something that clever. Johnny Mercer was a wonderful lyric writer. You have to appreciate those. And then you get into the other thing where the lyricist says, “It’s not the composer, it’s what the lyricist did that’s important.” Come on. When I find a song that is equal parts of both, that’s a damn good song, and that’ll be one of the songs I use all the time.

They disenfranchised me. It's like giving an award to Woody Herman's sax section, but not Woody, for "Early Autumn."