John Oates Good Quotations

I don't care if it's a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.

I think it's kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that's personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.

I think we realized this is a good time now because people really do want to hear some realistic songs, something that has some substance to it.

I think people were just starving for good material because they just weren't getting it on the radio.

We had a good run in the '70s but we got really big in the early '80s, ... It was a whirlwind. It was non-stop demands. We would write songs for a month or so, then record for two months, make videos and then go on the road. We put out a record a year from 1971 to 1985. We had more than one record some years. My personal life was my professional life. There was no down time.