I would love to do more private concerts.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

Ask any successfully married couple what keeps their relationship alive and they will tell you, "interest." It's as simple as that.

I salute you for your courage, and I applaud your perseverance, and I embrace you for your faith in the face of adversarial forces.

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.

You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity.

When youre dealing with digital goods, you dont have to be tied to one URL.

Sorrow shatters my heart; And men distress it with blame, Because it follows love.

An aphorism is a single sentence that totally exhausts its subject.

You can't be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.

New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences.