Neil Sedaka Quotes

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Neil Sedaka

Profession : Musician

Birth : March 13, 1939

Between 1958 and 1963, I sold about 40 million records - to the shock of my mother and father because I was always playing Beethoven. But I bought my mother a mink stole. She was very happy, and she said, 'I think this is better than Beethoven.'

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

You have to learn how to sing from your diaphragm, and you don't become a great performer overnight. It takes a while. The more you do it, the better you are.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

The spiritual writing of the song is where you're chosen as a vehicle, and it comes from something up above. You don't move; it writes itself. It's very spooky, but that's happened to me just a few times.

Neil Sedaka

I like Maroon 5, Cold Play. Snow Patrol from Ireland is very good. Adele is wonderful. I enjoy a new singer named Rumer. I don't care for rap or hip-hop.

Neil Sedaka

Howie Greenfield and I started writing music when I was 13 and he was 16. We lived in the same building.

Neil Sedaka

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

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

I started out just as Elvis was going into the army, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 14-year-old cousin, and Little Richard became a priest.

Neil Sedaka

I tend to be on the quiet side. I think I would have been bigger if I had a big mouth.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

My songs lie somewhere in between the evergreen standards, rock n' roll and pop.

Neil Sedaka

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.

Neil Sedaka

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

Neil Sedaka