I’m still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

I’d like to work on putting art programs back in schools.

It’s been pretty crazy. I’ve been in L.A. or New York or Nashville or all over the place. I got to go home for about a total of a week.

But then again in the East Coast, I think, Tupac, inspired everybody on the East Coast, everybody down south, everybody in the West Coast you know what sayin’.

You get up about 2-3 o’clock in the morning and get through about 7 or 8 and 12 hours later you start all over. That’s the worst kind of work a person can do. You...

There were so many individual styles thirty or forty years ago.

In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn’t convince other people...

I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There’s still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven’t been explained in song.

Oh, yeah. I know Dizzy. For years he’s been my buddy way, way, way back. Dizzy is one of the most astute guys and one of the most learned guys in the world and knows...

My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it.

We’ve accumulated a lot of things over the years and many things from our grandmother. Hopefully it’ll be all right. I really don’t want to cry, but I can’t help it.

The main point for me is moral; animals are sentient beings. I know for some this is a hard argument to accept, but we’re not built to eat a lot of meat.

I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you’re recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one...

The notes are right, but if I listened they would be wrong.

When you are trying to do something when you are getting started and you are trying to make records for the first time, you want it to be the best.

The only thing I was any good at was music.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

I remember wearing overcoats, hiding in the bushes outside of Abbey Road Studios, waiting for the traffic to clear. As it did, we would drop our overcoats and run out on to the cross walk...

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

I always wanted to do something completely different.

Well, one doesn’t try to hold Cass and Denny and Michelle together. It’s a useless task to start with. You just sort of stay out of the way and let things roll as they can.

So I’ve learned in the past, if a company approaches me and they want something like this, or something like that that I’ve done and I turn them down, they’re going to do it anyhow.

Well, I always hope that I’m a role model.

A lot of people say I’d miss show business if I quit. I’d miss some of it. Now it’s the only life I know.

I’ve been married to the same man for all this time. The way we fight sometimes, you can tell.

When the painting is hanging on your wall for a long time, you don’t notice it. You get tired of it, even if it’s a Picasso. When the next generation inherits the painting, they sell...

The simple things in life ground me and keep me focused so I’m able to do a good job with what is in front of me.

When some guy shows up with a shopping bag full of records and CD’s and wants me to sign every one plus fifteen pieces of blank paper I wonder what the hell is he doing...

Surrender to life itself and you’ll just be rewarded with so many things. And I’ve been rewarded so many times, in so many mysterious ways. So I have no reason to be disappointed with anything.

I remember li’l ol’ Hank Jr. – he was just a baby back in them days, you know – but he used to hang around. His mama would bring him around. He was just a...

The Beethoven Experience provided the opportunity to solidify the relationship between the Orchestra and me, the Orchestra and me and the public, between all of us and the city of New York, because Beethoven after...

Once we get into the groove, we’re kind of like long-distance runners – that adrenalin kicks in for me and I just keep running – and I don’t stop!

Elvis was rock’n’roll. He came from the poverty and the pain.

I think the one that really happened was Fever with Little Willie John. But, it only went so far because Peggy Lee jumped on it.

I get way more nervous playing golf in front of 500 people than being on stage in front of 20,000 people.

You can say things a million times, but if you can’t sing it, then it really isn’t much of a song.

I think a lot of women do hide it out of shame. It is supposed to be the happiest time in your life after giving birth to a child, you know.

I don’t do yoga. I bite the hella outta my nails. I smoke, I eat all the wrong food, I don’t exercise.

Prince Charles is very relaxed at the table, throwing his salad around willy-nilly. I didn’t find him stiff at all.

Respecting other people’s cultures is well and good, but I draw the line at where some branches of Islam, what they do to women. It’s indefensible.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It’s about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

I knew that collaborating on songwriting would be difficult for a lot of people, because I was known very much, for my independence and the fact that I wrote these quirky songs that were not...

But then it hasn’t really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.

They are too focused on the audience rather than on their own emotions, or they are too focused on technique or perhaps on both.

I loved Western Swing and Hank Williams’ music, and I now know that it’s a 6th tuning that gives you all of those classic licks.

I’m fairly specific about what I like to wear and looks are important to me, just like they are to everybody.

I just like playing with the band and doing what I do.