When Malcolm X was assassinated I was working at the Apollo. They brought his body to the Unity Funeral Home, which was around the corner.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

The two things you can't fake are good food and good music

All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.

I want a Sunday kind of love A love to last past Saturday night And I’d like to know it’s more than love at first sight

And I’d say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea: “There’s nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me.

Look, when you are starting to put something together, you want the pudding to come out good. You're trying to put in the right ingredients.

I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady lambent light, are luminous, but not sparkling.

Photography starts with the projection of the photographer, his understanding of life and himself into the picture.

All peoples are fed up with the American government.

I quit after a bad car accident. The thing about boxing is that you can be a star for five or six years, but when you go back to the old life, it's tough.

Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.

The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive.

When a lot of people are calling you crazy: you're either crazy, or you're onto something.

If you have a great manager, you want to pay him very well.