I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth; I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as jazz.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.

When I start working on a new album, I kind of stop listening to a lot of outside stuff just so I can kind of focus.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

I'm pretty much always planning two albums ahead.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.

For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

Kind of the sad thing is that - it's still true - a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

The star rises from the east. Watch out!

Tea is certainly as much of a social drink as coffee, and more domestic, for the reason that the teacup hours are the family hours.

Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.

It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but actually to be one. Yes, if I prove to be one, then I can have the name.

I think we are trying to improve for next week. Period. I do not think anybody is thinking about anything else.

The great mercy of God was that while I was purposefully preparing God's people, He was purposefully preparing me.

Being peaceful is being angel!

The woman who steals your boyfriend has the ugliest shoes on earth. Truly hideous. You wouldn't be caught dead in them.

Let us be renewed by God's mercy ... and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.

God writes spiritual Mysteries on our heart, where they wait silently for discovery.