I'm very new to the industry. I'm not on the Billboard 200 and that is alarming to me. But when I sat down with my management they said it's not a big deal and that it happens all the time.

There is a fine line between assertiveness and being relaxed.

And it's not a finger-pointing issue to me; I take as much responsibility as I can. It was more just me not really knowing what I wanted to do and how to get it done.

I would love to be like a Brian McKnight. Shoot, I'd love to be Brian McKnight.

There are a million things I can think of that I would I want to do. Reporting like you, would be one. A talk show host maybe, also. I want to do a lot.

They look at what's more important, like subjects to help with the SAT's, etc. They miss that music is vital. It offers a break from a stressful day of science and math and it's different.

I've been working on something, just some jazz, relaxed stuff. It will be standard, just piano and voice. It started out as a fun project for me though, I'm still not sure about releasing it.

Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.

For the second album I look forward to doing a lot of serious collaboration and taking the experiences I've had over this last year, good and bad, and working it into the album.

Either positive or negative comments are good because it shows I am still relevant.

When you have a very hot single there is no reason why it can't drive album sales. People fall off and come back on. I'm looking forward to coming back on with a vengeance.

What you call 'contradiction' I call 'complement'.

Wal-mart has done such a superb job of austerity, from start to finish, that austerity is all that's left.

When we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breathe gives us much pleasure.

I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.

Your natural decisions are the decisions that are going to be good.

America is not like a blanket- one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread.

The warm and radiant yes of the heart is perfect, like the sun, in bringing all things to life and nourishing all that is truly human.

I don't think my work is so strange. It's just a matter of having the discipline to go the whole way with an idea, to stretch it as far as it can go.

A person who rejects Christ may choose to say that I do not accept it, he may not choose to say there is not enough evidence.