And my career, the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American.

I'm a big believer in education, period.

A real active music set, based and really concentrated on what the music's all about. That's what I'm all about - singing and a really good strong music set.

It happened in Miami, in Coral Gables, a great big ol' Cuban wedding. It was pretty intense.

If there was any other place I would live, other than Miami, it would be California. It's beautiful. The weather is just gorgeous, I love being here, too.

I have a bachelor's and a master's in jazz.

I write in English first, and then I translate to Spanish. I've always felt more comfortable with the English side of things first.

So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.

Even before I became a recording artist, I did other things in music. I was a teacher, I did studio work, and I was an arranger and a producer.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

The kiss wove between gentle and frenzied, liquid and greedy, silken and primal, and he sucked every second of bliss he could from the forbidden pleasure.

I woke up on May 15, 1991, the day of my Barnard graduation, and I said to myself, 'By the end of today you will decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.'

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

Might the peasant expect the Almighty to stay the thunder storm, which clears the air of a nation from pestilence, lest the lightning bold should in its flash kill his cow?

Being in a state of mystery seems to be my calling.

There's really no "bad" people; there's just humans who are doing the best they can to figure life out. It's hard! We can all relate to that.

If we want to eliminate bad qualities like hatred, envy, pride and ostentation, we have to employ Sathya, Dharma, Santhi and Prema and Ahimsa as the cleaning instruments.

We're all taking on too much, we're all asking too much of ourselves. We're all wishing we could do more, and therefore just doing more.