If you're going to be called a musicianship, you have to be able to play.

I believe in the synergy and sharing platforms.

I'm usually writing or producing for other people. I'm like Burger King most of the time; I let people have it their way like "You want it like this? I'll give it to you like this."

Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.

People are getting record deals and they can barely sing. We have these new terms for artists that can dance, but they can't sing.

I just encourage everyone to make real music and it will fuel the engine and the machine. Just make it real and put your heart into it. Don't make it because you heard someone on the radio.

The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling.

I think when the music and the product is amazing, people buy it.

I want to make music that I know that ten years from now, you can put it on and say "This is a great record".

The one thing I always loved about Michael Jackson: he had fun records, but he's also going to make some important statement with the music as well. He's not going to forsake the culture.

You can't say that people don't love music anymore because they do. If we say that all the music stopped, if music stops now, the world can't handle that. We need our music.

Freedom is a gift that can never adequately be repaid.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

The only notes that matter come in a wad

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

Passing competitors always gives you a lift. It probably has a physical effect, too, because you get a surge of adrenaline.

I'm also 31 years old. It's not like I'm some kid who can be slapped across the newspaper pages like some harlot.

A writer must say yes to life.

-I am not sure whether he's sane. -If there's any doubt about the matter, he is.

They [U.S. soldiers] are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan.

I bet you, if I had met Trotsky, and had had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I have never yet met a man I didn't like.