Singers can also get away with a lot based on youth, strength and enthusiasm, only to find ten years later that what was once just a niggling problem has brought their careers to an end.

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.

Beauty is where the beheld butterfly disappears from sight.

Any titles, money, or privilege you inherit are actually hindrances. They delude you into believing you are owed respect.

I would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was also me.

Decision-making is lonely.

We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives.

Sometimes my hands they don’t feel like my own; I need someone to love, I need someone to hold.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality.

In great groups, the right people always have the right job.

In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success.