I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.

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.

I would so rock at running amuck.

I hope that I have accomplished just one thing: that I have been a credit to tennis and my country.

If I do not give a friend "The benefit of the doubt," but put the worst construction instead of the best on what is said or done, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

You need to be real enough to be believable, but you don't necessarily have to be real enough to be real. There is a distinction.

If doing what ought to be done be made the first business and success a secondary consideration--is not this the way to exalt virtue?

By our actions we tell Him of our love.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

We only wanted to pay significant sums to keep truly special players.

...choose to deal with inhumane situations in a humane way, we can turn the world around and create positive lessons for ourselves and for others.