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.

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.

Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.

Loving was so joyful and charming.Forgetting is so tearful and never ending.

Never give up in life. Learn to be humble, resilient, honest, wise and submissive and you'll be able to make a change better than anyone else.

Every act of kindness is another step up Heaven’s stairway.

It is good practice to never fault someone for their birth name, being that it is always of far greater importance how men speak of you, than the name by which you are addressed.

I am Sama Veda among the Vedas

Art never lies, I believe.

President Obama believes in a level playing field.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue