I watched Elvis Presley become - I listened to Elvis Presley. I watched Chuck Berry become. I listened to Little Richard. I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.

Once you discover that you can, then you must.

Before I get out of bed, I am saying thank you. I know how important it is to be thankful.

I would still be singing, because it's part of my heart and my soul, and it lifts me up. Find something you would do for free.

I don't know where we got the notion that God wants us to suffer. Every living thing tends toward the good or we would have been gone a long time ago.

You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues.

It's all background experience and listening and exposure. That's why it's so important for people today and during any time to expose your children to lots of different kinds of things.

To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it's somebody else's lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.

I sang do-wop on the street corner before it was called do-wop.

I did a concert at five years old in the garden of one of the church members, and we raised some money to buy a new piano in our little church.

I know more polkas than Frankie Yankovic. I grew up next door to the Polka Tavern in Milwaukee. I can sing some polkas. And proud of that.

I have yet to see Satan overcome a truly joyful Christian.

Are you crazy? The last thing you want to do is make a scene." "Well, I'm gonna make a movie if you don't show me some respect.

For now, I'll let you plead temporary amnesia, " he said and lifted my chin to him. "But I'm never going to forget what it felt like when you were biting my lip instead of your own.

Listen, I have to spend every single day living with me, so I know for a fact; I'm lovely, I'm completely lovely.

I have always worked and I would say I'm generous with money - if somebody needed anything I would always give it to them.

Take up your own daily cross; it is the burden best suited for your shoulder, and will prove most effective to make you perfect in every good word and work to the glory of God.

Resentments are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my saber.

The only tactics I admire are do-or-die

I tend to think of myself as a highly emotional writer. It's all coming out of the deepest feelings, out of dreams, out of the unconscious.

There is no man in this world without some manner of tribulation or anguish, though he be king or pope.