I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn't interested.

I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.

My first love was the sound of guitar.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I'm not a jazz singer.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

Life is like one big blueprint, if you don't make plans then your future will not be built

Prereading is a game changer. It changed my life. Everyone is smarter when they have seen the material before. You will be too

In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before.

It's very unfortunate that war has always been and probably always will be a part of human beings on this planet. It's a terrible thing.

Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.

Music is really all about experimentation and lots of trial and error. It's just mind-numbingly boring until you hit on something that works well.

I find it hard to take chances that might mean making bad decisions.

There are bills being discussed to raise the amount that Members of Congress pay in to their benefits and I support these pieces of legislation.

I was the one that allegedly "quit and joined my old band." That wasn't true. But it was said so matter-of-factly on the Internet that the guys weren't really sure what I was up to.

God and the afterlife and all that is certainly a subject that's interested me, and I think it interests me more the older that I get.