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.

I was a guitar player first off.

For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.

It's what we think of ourselves that matter

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.

Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.

I'm rockin' PJ's and no shirt. I smoke weed, eat yogurt

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.

We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire.