Rock 'n' roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters - twelve children.

I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock 'n' roll!

A-bop-bop-a-loom-op-a-lop-bop-boom.

Greed has taken the whole universe, and nobody is worried about their soul.

And I'd like to give my love to everybody, and let them know that the grass may look greener on the other side, but believe me, it's just as hard to cut.

I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.

A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true.

Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen.

I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. ... When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.

I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?

The Son of Man saves souls.

The man that wars with others is lost. The man that wars with himself is found.

The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there is no competition.

To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.

I learned that a real friendship is not about what you can get, but what you can give. Real friendship is about making sacrifices and investing in people to help them improve their lives.

A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying.

I started collecting my artist friends, artists like myself who nobody had yet noticed. In everything, all I am collecting, so to speak, are my friends - artist friends.

Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.

It’s all about loving what you got and rocking it.

You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.'' "No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.