I went from elementary school to proper training, operatic training, and I went on to the Motown University and learned a lot of things from some wonderful people.

Disco music in the '70s was just a call to go wild and party and dance with no thought or conscience or regard for tomorrow.

Going on with life, it only gets more and more intense as time goes by - and the challenges only multiply.

I was stranded in Disco. I went to dozens of darkened places with enough flashing lights to drive the average person mad. I felt lost in the pulse of sheer panic.

I don't worry about being in a hurry anymore, because my faith in God will always deliver me on time.

You can't very well live in a castle while your kin is on the poor side of town and barely have enough food. Some want you to get to the top and rely on you making it for them, too.

The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.

Good and bad - this is the story of my life.

If you stick around long enough, people start referring to you as a survivor. Suddenly I found myself on the receiving end of several prestigious awards.

I worshipped Berry Gordy for the creative dreams he had made come true.

The world I was born into was one filled with music.

Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.

Parenting has no guide book

The best remedy for anger is delay.

I talk to people who are musicians, and they go, Oh this is hell. And I go, Are you kidding me? You never put tar paper on a roof, did ya?

I don't believe in the death penalty. I believe that there are other people as we speak right now in prison, wrongfully accused, who could serve such a fate. That is injustice at its greatest.

I guess this is gonna sound kind of weird, but I'm not scared for myself for dying. Because I believe all these places are temporary. This is just one shell. Because we Hawaiians live in both worlds.

I remember when I was a little boy my father didn't love me; he couldn't. He loved my older brother but he couldn't love me somehow, at least not in a way I could understand it.

Mitt Romney looks like a secretary of state. He looks like the chancellor of the exchequer.

Take care of each other.

Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.