I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.

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.

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.

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.

She seemed to think reading was some sort of hobby, as opposed to being as necessary as breathing, sleeping, and eating.

The ghost is the outward and visible signs of an inward fear.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

Life is a zero sum game.

War is a crime which involves all other crimes.

The Bible is not a book of principles to live by but rather a Person to live for.

I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

In good writing, words become one with things.

Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.