The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it's going to go and where you'll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don't let anyone deter you from that.

I love 'Somebody to Love' by Queen and of course 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is one of my favorites, just because it makes everyone in the room go crazy. Everyone tries to sing along with it, and half the room gets it right and the other half gets it wrong.

I think I'm doing a service to black women by portraying myself as a sex machine. I mean, what's wrong with being a sex machine, darling? Sex is large, sex is life, sex is as large as life, so it appeals to anyone that's living, or rather it should.

I see myself as no color. I can play the role of a man. I can paint my face white if I want to and play the role of white. I can play a green, I can be a purple. I think I have that kind of frame and that kind of attitude where I can play an animal.

The first time I had sex, I was scared I got the girl pregnant. And that was despite the fact we were safe. Luckily, we were fine. I would never risk not wearing a condom, it’s too much of a risk. If you’re not ready for a child, then don’t risk it.

I'm really proud of 'Coming Home.' I wrote that about Eric, and I just feel like it's very relatable for anyone who has to be away from their loved ones, you know, for long periods of time - our military, people who are working. It's pretty special.

A lot of times, it's nice to open, because the heat's off you. You just go out and blast your set and say to whoever's going to finish, 'There you go.' Even though when you first start, people are drifting in, and that's kind of a bit disconcerting.

We got trapped in the limo during a thunderstorm on our way to the reception. The bride wanted to wait for the storm to pass before they went in. It was actually an awesome chance for the couple to have some quiet time together after their ceremony.

I love being able to say a quick thanks to the man above for the music and the fact that we're even in this spot. If you'd told me this in college when I was sitting on a stool and playing for enchiladas and tips, I'd have bet everything against it.

In my late 30s, I flirted with the idea of having a child without necessarily being in a steady relationship. But I've never had a strong maternal urge, and then I got cancer of the womb - luckily caught at an early stage - so that put paid to that.

I've battled psoriasis; I've had an autoimmune disease since I was two. So I'm very vigilant about taking care of myself and eating right and what I put in my body. It's something that I had to be aware of since a young age. So health is a big deal.

I learned from Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, the Nicholas Brothers, the whole thing, the whole schmear. [The Cotton Club] was a great place because it hired us, for one thing, at a time when it was really rough [for Black performers].

I believe happiness is a chemical imbalance - it's a silly thing to strife for. But satisfaction - if you seek satisfaction, you can succeed. Satisfaction is knowing that you're doing the best that you can do; you're living your life to the fullest.

I didn't have a strong male figure in my life on a day-to-day basis. So I think that whole [marriage] situation, a lot of it stems from a place where I was out there alone as a really and I always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under me.

I've never been good at making smart career decisions or doing the right strategic thing, and yet somehow it's all led me to exactly the kind of career that I would have dreamed of having - if only I'd been smart enough to dream something like that.

If I had any advice to give to anybody, it would be record your parents talking so that, when you're longing to hear that voice, you can play the tape. But for me, it's a little often. You don't always need to be reminded that he isn't here anymore.

I don't think of God as an old white man with no belly button, nor even an old black woman with no belly button. But I agree that God is something eternal. Something cannot come out of nothing. I believe God is Everything. And I believe in infinity.

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

I'm something totally different. There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment, but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion.

You just have to love yourself and live and die with the passion of the music. I walk around happy as hell because I create music for a living. I can touch the world with my heart and my passion. Music has dominated life well before I was ever born.

These tears I'm wailing, I spill not without reason. Remove them, my dearest love. Take me to the place I've been dreaming of, where the grotesquely lonely meet the grotesquely lonely and they whisper, just very softly, Please be mine, Dearest Love.

I don't want to get too involved in marketing budgets, online promotions and download set-ups because it would be a bit like Gertrude Stein mapping out a TV campaign. I want to sing. I want visibility. I am essentially Al Martino, not Seymour Stein.

We need to know ourselves better so that we can realize what we really want in our life. I think that the first condition for a person to be in a successful relationship is to be happy with the person he or she is, in other words to love themselves.

I have this image in my head of me in the house I grew up in, and hearing this incredible music on the television show, going over to it, and there's Jon Hendricks, Dave Lambert, and Annie Ross. It knocked me out of my socks, and I'm still in flight.

We had to go all through the night thinking that our baby was dead. When God showed him to us, he wasn't dead, he was sucking his thumb. God had him safe and sound. He is a miracle. He is so healthy, so perfect, and God has really, really blessed us.

It's quite hard to have your mom as a teacher - it's like, she's not necessarily a "real teacher" for me. But she'd always teach me to really hear the music, and develop my ear, and to try and hear the harmonics of the piano. That was the main thing.

The music video director really wanted to incorporate the imagery of guns into 'Nega Dola' because the lyrics are very aggressive. It kind of portrayed a very strong image. So that's how we connected weapons and the imagery of a dangerous atmosphere.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.

I just remembered songs my grandmother taught me, and songs that I learned for the recordings. But, then I learned to speak Italian. When I was there, I hired a professor who stayed with me 24 hours a day. She wouldn't let me speak a word of English.

Since I was a kid, I always felt like God had placed something inside my heart. And I always believed that God was going to do something great in my life. But I didn't know the road that I was going to take to get here. And especially losing my wife.

I hung out with Merle Haggard on his bus, which sort of freaks me out. It was him and his wife. We played with Merle in Oklahoma City. I'm from Arizona, and we talked about Arizona, and he remembered playing for two dollars a day down there at a bar.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there's always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

There are several things I think I would have done if I had the chance again. I would have been a little more patient about getting out into the world. I would have seen to it that I had a more formal education. I would have become an accomplished mu

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

I'm marching for women; I'm marching for the LGBT community. I'm marching for immigrants. I happen to fall into all three categories, so I'm marching for myself at the end of the day and for my family and my friends. And for whoever else deserves it.

I'm not interested in stirring anybody up through music. If you're going to stir people up, it has to be a thought process that has nothing to do with music. I see music as having to do with an internal thing. Something that stirs you up is external.

As far as my personality, my friends and family know I'm crazy! I love to have fun; I'm bubbly. People say I'm funny but I don't know that I'm funny: I don't try to be funny and tell jokes and stuff like that, but I always got something slick to say.

Everybody comments that I'm white. I'm surprised I haven't gotten more criticism for it. I'm always expecting any day now it's gonna come. I guess I just attribute the lack of hate to people hearing the music and hearing how much I genuinely love it.

It's been said that Bill Gates has come up with something that'll be released in December that's gonna put a lid on counterfeiting. If that's a fact then it's really interesting to own your own product - with all the potential methods of downloading.

I resent like hell that I was maybe eighteen before I ever heard the 'L' word. It would have made all the difference for me had I grown up knowing that the reason I didn't fit in was because they hadn't told me there were more categories to fit into.

I feel closer to my country than ever. There is no longer a feeling of lonesome isolation. Instead-peace. I return without fearing prejudice that once bothered me . . . for I know that people practice cruel bigotry in their ignorance, not maliciously

I've thought about doing a subscription service, where people pre-pay and then we send them 12"s as they're finished, with one song on each side. That would be really fun. But we'll need a significant time off from touring to be able to fulfill that.

I think Badfinger was the epitome of that type of music before the power pop term was coined. 'No Matter What" is always gonna be a great song on the radio. There?s probably two or three others off their records that are as cool like 'Day After Day'.

Being with the president’s daughter, no matter who the president is, you are connected to the most powerful political force on earth, and that’s scary. And when you mix crystal meth and alcohol with that, it’s…kind of exciting. A little too exciting.

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars.

My mother, Yolanda, was a little girl who never grew up, and sometimes we would laugh, and I would say things like, 'Okay, so now it looks like I am your mother and you are my daughter,' to which she would reply, 'Well, yes. Handle it and pamper me.'

It saddens me to think that there are children in America who are hungry every day of their lives. No one can live - and grow - withoiut such a fundamental necessity as food. If we Americans reach out to our own communities, we could end this crisis.

I think it's important to find somebody who you trust, who has the same vision. If I were to do that myself, and not trust anybody to do it for me or with me, I would have to spend as much time as I have learning to make music on making music videos.

There are people who are surprised at my politics and being a conservative and the rest of it. But the truth of the matter is, to my knowledge, I have never been overlooked or turned down for anything that I wanted to do that was being offered to me.

I think people solidify the direction they want to go and the style they want to have once their puberty passes. I think your twenties is when you learn new things and you have the opportunity to give your all to something, whether it's work or love.

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