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.

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.

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.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

Wisdom is the intelligent use of our knowledge, whereas sensibility is an intelligent use of our judgment.

It's difficult to become someone you don't know at all. It's difficult, indeed, to become yourself.

But Fin would always be a bit of a romantic, at least when it came to books.

I know I earn less at my primary school than you do, but I don't have to work as hard at my primary school.

This is pure snow! Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?

Any Government, like any family, can for a year spend a little more than it earns. But you and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poorhouse.

If I weren't a Jew then I wouldn't be an artist, or at least not the one I am now.

I don't like fun, it upsets me.

You're always going to face a little bit of criticism from time to time.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.