Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

Listen to your own intuit. Have stronger wisdom to judge your own belief and things that you desire to do NOT what others want you to do.

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.

When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing.

The weak makes excuses, the strong makes changes.

I never read gossip press. I just read books. And I never switch on the TV any more.

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

I got into politics when I was eight years old.

You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it.

I'm not one of these guys who's constantly in a relationship, not at all