The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

#Note: There is a wonder to life. Pursue it. Hunt for it. Your goal is not to live long…it’s to live!

When left holding an empty bag, fill it with dreams of honor and glory!

Sometimes it is good to breach the rulesso as to achieve an end, Yet keep an edge and not break or bend.

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. And that has a lot to do with trust.

The grand destroyer of the world, and the greatest threat... is represented by U.S. imperialism.

Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power.

Often, what seems an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in.

The end of all is death and man's life passeth away suddenly as a shadow.