Football management is such a pressurised thing - horseracing is a release. I'm also learning to play the piano - I'm quite determined - it's another release from the pressure of my job.

Man after all my grandma put into me learning the piano that was a hard day telling her I was telling jokes for a living.

I hope to refine music study it try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world there's got to be other notes some place in some dimension between the cracks on the piano keys.

The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home I play the piano and make them on the piano.

It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician but because I principally play the piano it's been a solitary thing.

I totally related to Cole Porter's magnetic pull to any piano that was in the room which he was famous for doing as was Gershwin. You couldn't drag them away from a piano.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano ' too I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film even if it's contemporary creates its own world.

Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

I think we were raised in a nice Texas Jewish family where education was the most important thing and close behind that was the arts. It was emphasized and expected that we'd play piano.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.

Now guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something I'd like to study piano.

The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible. So I'll play in bands and record and play songs with other people but for me it's a form of expression that all I need is me. I don't need cameras or agents I can just have a piano and sing and feel totally verified.

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing and business and playing the piano and so on.

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar no matter what the project is.