Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

One of the many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the audience. Music, painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so 'easy' as they had been.

Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.

It is long accepted by the missionaries that morality is inversely proportional to the amount of clothing people wore

I love pancakes, and I actually do love healthy stuff. Like, I love gluten-free or whole-wheat pancakes. Breakfast is my favorite meal.

Eventually we will find (mostly in retrospect, of course) that we can be very grateful to those people who have made life most difficult for us.

I know how Lupe Velez felt. You fight just so long and then you begin to worry about being washed up. You fear there's one way to go and that's down.

Until my ONE thing is done, everything else is a distraction.

Sam- I didn't know you had a last name I thought you were like Iman or Madonna or Beyonce. You just needed the one name. Dekka- Yeah sure, me and Beyonce

Some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic.