I always make the joke that I go home, to one of my homes, to go and do laundry so I can go on the road again.

I've got to where I am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.

I am a forward-looking person and live in the moment to build for the future.

I think it is incumbent on all human beings to oppose injustice in every form.

I lived for music since I could think.

The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans.

It's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.

I don't think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it.

When people campaign for positions, they promise people all kinds of things.

All my experiences removed geography from my world.

Ignorance is the root of many ills. Knowledge must be the fundamental ally of nations that aspire, despite all their tragedies and problems, to become truly emancipated, to build a better world.

You experience true happiness when the things you desire rise up to the level of the things you deserve.

The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

Love, Cough, & a Smoke, can't well be hid.

Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes.

I haven't stopped working since I was 10.

With emptie hands men may no haukes lure.

That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.

Our own choices might not be as good as those that are made for us.

My lesson from that [songwriting process] was that I should go back to where I was and try to make that first pure even more strong.