Tom Lehrer

San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug.

I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.

The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.

I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.

When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead.

I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.