Donald Fagen Thinking Quotations

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.

I think of Steely Dan as being of its time, and it may be inseparable from its time.

I'm starting to get older, and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that's going to be a revelation. So for me, this album - although it might sound quite cheery - is really talking about death.

We don't think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it's more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK.

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.