Every time I hit the stage I try to take something from it. There are a lot of shows and opportunities to be seen like that. I like to just take all of them and allow them to help me build.

I feel that when you have a passion and you are real, you last throughout the ages and you're able to reincarnate your artistry numerous times.

I can't be passionate about something that I don't understand. In my music, I feel that's why people can connect so well with it because it's all honest.

Love and heartbreak is something that's always been a part of me.

I'm connecting and that's really what any artist wants at the end of the day which is to connect with their fans and supporters.

I feel like pain is the quickest way to relate to someone because everybody has been through that and everybody has had a heartbreak.

I'm one of the artists that even though I love my soulful stuff, I love to turn up and have a good time and that's another side of me. As long as it doesn't veer away from who I am, I'm down with it.

I never put myself in a box. I like to have various different types of songs and different genres and situational songs. No matter is going on, I have something for that time or era.

When you have somebody who takes their craft seriously, you don't have to babysit them and be there all the time.

Everything I do is about setting up for the next. I think that my confidence and belief in myself as well as the music and trusting my judgment of my songs really grew the most.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Change is the very basis of our life, not to be fought, to be welcomed and tasted, to be seen for the gift it truly is.

You cant get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

Make sure you're right, then go ahead.

I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say.

Mom and Dad were great, but being asked where I was going every time I left the house - or where I'd been every time I returned - got old quickly.

They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."

Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.

Full of wise saws and modern instances.