The short answer is, yes, I think I have become a better singer.

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.

But that’s what He does. Waits until the darkness seems too deep to be overcome, and then, here comes the light.

I would call the French scumbags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum. I say we invade Iraq, then invade Chirac.

There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction.

Whatever you're going through in your life, don't ever give up.

Cowards always drag in the Bible to back theirselves up far more than proper people does.

The reality is the park has been badly maintained for years.

A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

the best 4 letter word in the world is Hope

When you mutilate movies for mass media, you tamper with the hearts and minds of America.