I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth; I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as jazz.

When I start working on a new album, I kind of stop listening to a lot of outside stuff just so I can kind of focus.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

I'm pretty much always planning two albums ahead.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.

For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

Kind of the sad thing is that - it's still true - a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

Charm is simply a matter of being yourself. Your uniqueness is your power.

When push comes to shove, it ain't the science that's going to lift you up - it's the belief, the spiritual side of life, that's going to lift you up, no matter what religion you are.

I've always boxed, I always taught boxing.

My grandfather taught me how important it is to have your eyes open,because you never know what's going to come your way.

Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.

My own interest is far more in the Hebrew Bible. My religion is more personally related to the Hebrew Bible than it is to the New Testament.

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You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.