I'm one of those people who sort of feeds on music.

There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days

We all assume the worst the best we can.

I just try to use my own life to build a human song: something that people can relate to in some way. It's not like the psychiatrist's couch or anything.

I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining.

We play some smaller songs larger than they are the record, and vice versa. It took me a while to get used to playing live.

It's fun to be able to revisit a song and do something that doesn't really illustrate the song but works tangentially or runs parallel to the song in some way.

I'm kind of interested in visual communication. For me it's more about suggesting than arguing a point.

I had all these songs lying around. They had all these woman characters, and I thought the idea of the Woman King would be a good way to tie them all together.

It sort of depends on the song. Some of them are pretty easy to write, and others take a while. I do a lot of writing in the morning.

There are good places to play and bad places.

There was no use feeling guilty about getting on to the ship when you are in the middle of the ocean. If you felt guilty or sorry, you had only one option – drown in the middle of the sea.

One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn't care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

... there is no deodorant like success.

Love is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being.

When I joined the band I was coming largely from an improvising background, and the idea of a fluid rhythm that was really coherent attracted me.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.

If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.'

My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role, but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.