People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.

I get a wave of pride in America when I look back at what we've accomplished in the field of music.

Genetically, I'm pure Greek. Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I'm a member of the black community.

When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African American culture that I couldn't imagine not being part of it.

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain.

When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African-American culture that I couldn't imagine not being part of it.

When someone tells you that you have done something that has hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.

Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.

The journey is about coming home....There is always the return. And the wound will take you there. It is a blood-trail." (p. 220, 222)

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

I learned just by going around. I know all about Kleenex factories, and all sorts of things.

Focus on making you the best you can be as an actor, and follow your own path.

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors; they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.

The next thing you do is allocate resources.

Frank Sinatra's never been handsome, but he's one of my favorite singers. Who needs looks when you have a voice and power?