I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.

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.

My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.

My first love was the sound of guitar.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I'm not a jazz singer.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

It is necessary to write out in details what you need to do everyday in regards to your purpose and calling

Tolerance never exists without negative judgment. It is the sentiment of having a negative opinion about something yet still putting up with it.

Choose your tempo, ” he whispered in her ear. “What?” “Fast and hard or slow and easy. Your tempo, your choice. You get to direct this symphony.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

I don't really know if I want to do acting as a career. I really don't know what I want to do yet.

Although I myself don't go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it's superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

When I'm acting, I've always got to make it make sense to me why I do anything. Whether it's right or wrong, I've just got to believe this is the reason why I am doing this and just go with it.

The day for the Negro man being a coward is over.

The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.