A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

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.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.

God often uses our challenges as stepping stones to the higher purposes of God.

The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm in control of every situation. I'm rarely in control of any situation.

The Orenda is a powerful story from history, folklore and the imagination, based on the universality of human cruelty, superstition and perseverance. Wonderful writing.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry

Every great love starts with a great story.

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

'Savage' describes a cultural condition, not a degree of intelligence.

Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.