Don't believe everything you hear on the street.

Playing guitar is not a beauty contest.

The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin.

You get to the point in life where you realize you have to roll up your sleeves, deal with the consequences of what happens, and carry your own weight.

My first gig was in Philadelphia and I played the drums for my older brothers. That same night, I also played drums for Martha and the Vandellas. Ah, the fond memories of being 14.

I got my first guitar in October of 1968. I'm self-taught.

There was a lot of music in our home. Mom played piano in church and gave piano lessons.

It's no surprise to me or the other Isley brothers that I can sing, because I used to sing all the time in practice. The surprise is that somebody else likes it.

Passionate—that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment.

Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.

People under siege turn to us in complete frustration and I get a chance to go in when it's do or die.

Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.

I could float in the pool for hours, just letting the water carry me.

I want to give people the message and let them feel my emotion behind it.

The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.

To lose is not always failure.

It seems the brighter you are, the deeper the hole you get into.

Just because someone has gone to an elite school and college does not make him smarter than the person who has grown up on street knowledge.