I’m the Latin artist who has been the most successful in history at representing the Latin culture. The stylings of my words are immodest, but it’s the truth.

Sometimes I wonder if I got lulled into not wanting things because I grew up black in this country.

We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank’s songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex.

Our shows are packed with laughter and light-hearted songs to lift the listener from their everyday life. We encourage the audience to participate in any way.

I didn’t get to meet Hank Williams. I was in the Air Force on Okinawa when he passed away.

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right....

My father’s record collection was all country. That’s how I was exposed to it.

I’m seeing and hearing lots of B to B instruments, and everybody isn’t, you know, using them… a lot of these guys are trying to do it on conventional guitars, although that has its own...

Right now I’m struggling to get on my feet and I wouldn’t be to continue through that process if it were for my fans and how good they are to me.

There’s nothing wrong with shooting for the stars.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.

I’ll say it loud and say it proud. I’m completely insane.

I hate nostalgia, I want nothing to do with it.

I don’t think Elvis was able, really, to perform a lot of times when he did. I worried about that, same way I did with Hank Williams, Sr.

I believe in love that’s fun,that is caring,giving,and that is honest.

One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness.

No, because I don’t want to hear what’s hot and feel I have to copy it. I’ll just make up my own thing.

You’re really creative when you’re in an environment that you don’t know how to handle. So collaborating was like that for me. I think that was one of the reasons why I knew I was...

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end – and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.

There’s a mystery to writing, and you don’t really know where most of it comes from.

On Eye of the Zombie, I just got some studio musicians who were competent, but some of them weren’t right for what I was trying to do.

I don’t want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don’t achieve nearly what I want.

The thing is that we travel so much together that it wouldn’t be a vacation. You get off the road and you’re going to turn around and travel again?

Whatever dramas are going on in my life, I always find that place inside my head where I see myself as the cleanest, tallest, strongest, wisest person that I can be.

Of course the most difficult thing on the violin is always intonation. The second one is rhythm. If you play in tune, in time with a good sound that’s already high level. Those three are...

At one point, I didn’t get out of bed for, I think, three months, and I went down to the bottom of the hill one day and I had to call somebody to get me...

Humility is really important because it keeps you fresh and new.

I don’t really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

Aledo will always be home to me because I spent the first 27 years of my life there – it’s such a special place – and because of the experiences I had there, I’ve become...

I still had some honor… I still have some now.

I’ll probably be punished for hard living.

If the ride is more fly, then you must buy.

Leaving America is like losing twenty pounds and finding a new girlfriend.

Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected.

Yeah, about sixteen to twenty weeks a year. For example, we can do America in six or seven weeks. You can do Europe in three weeks; England in two weeks. South America you could do...

I fought for peace in the fifties.

I see the Ricky Martin thing, and everything is like, just packaged for this moment. Where are they going to be 10 years, 20 years from now?

We’re the acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff.

You have to know when to be arrogant. You have to when to be humble. You have to know when to be hard and you have to know when to be soft.

They say poets write mostly for themselves; if anyone else likes it, well and good, if not, it doesn’t matter; certainly, not to me.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people – directors, filmmakers, and writers – over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

I screwed my knee up once because I fell off the stage.

In film, you are a totally different person than in the video.

This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn’t...

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.

When I was in my twenties, it felt like I was riding wild horses, and I was hoping I didn’t go over a cliff.

There’s not ever much of anything going on in my head.

I’m ready for anything they throw at me.

That was where my dream began to take hold, of not havin’ to pick cotton and potatoes, and not havin’ to be uncomfortable, too hot or too cold. That in itself had driven me to...