I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

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.

When it hurts, don’t be afraid to say ouch!

I want my country to be trusted. I don't want anybody running for president telling the unions what they want to hear at the expense of the credibility of the United States.

The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise.

We have to still develop the IKEA group. We need many billions of Swiss francs to take on China or Russia.

The trouble is you can't play many matches when you lose them.

I've been burn when it comes to my hair that it ain't no joke.

I wanted to branch out into American television, specifically because you get to develop a character for a longer period of time and you get to develop a relationship with the audience.

I don't think you could pull one Bob Marley song that didn't have quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament.

I got picked on a lot as a kid.

I'm very rarely interested in genres. As long as I feel I can put my DNA out there in the ideology, it works for me.