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.

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.

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

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

There is no such thing as loving a child too much.

A bowl of diligence and perseverance, a cup of faith and a pinch of inspiration mixed with a spoon of contentment are the ingredients of a delicious success. Cook yours well.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

Going to work just looked crazy. Eating another meal, ever, made about as much sense as planting tulip bulbs in the shadow of a falling atom bomb.

Success can come to a person who has failed, but it will never come to a person who quits

I'm for everybody. There are no set rules. But if one's not a joiner. To hell with all of them!

I have a lot of stamina and I have a lot of resilience.

The school must be "a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons".

I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!

I think I'm more effective as an activist if I stay in music, to be honest. Music, the way it reaches people and transcends divisions, is a really effective and powerful forum.