I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

Someday the sun is going to shine down on me in some faraway place.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Never allow your limitations to be a stronghold in your life

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

No one said you can't go outside the lines.

I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.

Faith is not to get you out of a hard place but to change your heart in the hard place.

I felt like high school for me was like a big whirlpool of me trying to figure out what was OK for me to do.

The truth is that the first changes are so slow they pass almost unnoticed, and you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside.

Let me fall. Let me climb. There's a moment where fear and dream must collide.