Success and failure are equally surprising.

I never felt entitled to anything. I’m the hardest worker I know.

The Philadelphia/New York world of the music business is a tough place to be.

You don’t have to be a good singer any more if you can rap well.

Reject what you don’t want. Get rid of dead wood.

I knew that I would be making music for my whole life; as far as how many people respond to it, you can’t plan for that.

If you see me walking down the street, you’re gonna see the same guy as you do on stage, dressed the same, looking the same, and nothing changes. I’m just one person.

I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they’re stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend.

I’m very enthused about everything. I have a lot to say and a lot of things I’m interested in.

The ‘Daryl’s House’ thing has made me into a live musician even more than I ever was, and even in the way I record.

I think Philadelphia has been underrated over the years as a musical region.

The song ‘Laughing Down Crying’ is not a typical Daryl song.

You externalise extreme emotions, and you look at them objectively and understand them from a different standpoint.

The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with ‘American Bandstand’ and the music that came out of that city.

I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.

My house is actually two houses that were deconstructed. They were Connecticut Valley houses built in 1771 and 1781. I took them down piece by piece and reconstructed them about 50 miles to the west...

I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn’t go away. After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the...

I’ve always been a guy who likes to stretch my limits – to find out if I have any, really.

The biggest honor of my career was when I won R&B Artist of the Year back in the 1970s. I look at that as a major honor.

If Paul McCartney tells me that so-and-so song is his favorite song, what do I care? What do I care what anybody else says?

Traditionally, duos get accused of lots of things.

I’ve been watching RFD-TV for a few years. As a person who lives mostly in the country, I appreciate a network that shows the many facets of rural life.

The younger generation gives me more respect than I could ever hope for.

I’m quite an eclectic musician.

The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet’s killing the record business, I say, ‘Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.’

I’m in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and...

All artists have insecurity.

What I do isn’t black music; it’s just my music.

Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter; a major influence on my own music from the very start.

Americans think that if you’re popular, there must be something wrong with you.

When you’re playing in front of people, everything is external. It’s all going from you out to an audience. When you’re in a studio, it’s very internalised, it’s going from the air through you into...

To me, there’s two kinds of music these days. There’s ephemeral music, and there’s music that has lasting power and depth.

If you can sing, you never lose your voice. If you don’t know how to sing, your voice goes away because you sing from your throat.

This illness made it impossible for me to give my best effort to our audience, but now that it’s been identified, I’m looking forward to a complete, quick recovery and to get back out there...

Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters.

Being at college, I think that’s the time when you really start searching for things outside yourself.

When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles.

The first thing I ever did was play talent shows at the Uptown Theater and the Adelphi Ballroom.

Any song I don’t feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it’s because I want to.

For years and years, I was beset with snide remarks by certain members of the press, where they would turn John Oates into a joke, or they would trivialize what I do, which never really...

Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I’m part of that, and now I’m part of the museum that celebrates that.

I think an artist’s true worth comes through an inter-generational thing – when you go beyond your own time, and start influencing people in a greater way than just what surrounds you.

If you’re African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

I have to say I have never been comfortable with somebody else telling me what to do – in any way.

Every artistic form has its golden age, and unfortunately I think the golden age for whatever I do probably ended about 1990.

I have an English family and I’ve lived in England for years.