If I can bring joy into the world, if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment, or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off... then I'll be successful.

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra - besides singing in the college chorus and things like that.

Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.

Part of our responsibility as parents, as adults, is to set examples for children. But we have to like children in order to be really happy fulfilled adults.

I like to use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.

I played piano as a kid; I still play a little bit.

I do a lot of performing, but don't get a chance to go to the studio and write good music.

I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.

I don't want anything to get in the way of me and my singing. I want my mind as clear as possible.

Then I left that school and I went to Cerritos College, which was in southern California; they had one of the best big band programs in the country at the time.

My father was a very disciplined singer who worked hard at his craft, and I was around that growing up.

I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.

If I can bring joy into the world, if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment, or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off... then I'll be successful.

Miles Davis turned his back to the audience when he came out on stage, and he offended people. But, he wasn't there to entertain; he was all about the music. I kind of do that.

It's not that I don't love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.

I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.

I prepared five songs, I sang them, and he hired me. I started working about a month later at the piano bar.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.

I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.

My biggest musical influences are probably my parents.

When I'm on stage by myself, I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to worry about anything because I'm not responsible for anything except just opening my mouth and making sure music comes out.

The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts.

In every life we have some trouble. But when you worry, you make it double.

Musicians are the architects of heaven.

To make a long story short, there's nothing like having a boss walk in.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

As an individual, not as the boss of a company, I am very interested in motor racing.

I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the most debilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising.

Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served- that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.

The type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children.

To me, success was not having to have a boss and not having a day job. I've been living my own version of success since the early '90s when I first got signed. I haven't had a job since then.

Well, what I tried to do is to just listen to my voice, because my voice is my boss. She decides.

The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it's a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush.

I loved my role on Who's the Boss? There is always some of me in every character that I play.

I've never wanted to be the boss.

That's my main flaw: I always think authority figures or my boss is going to think something I do is funny. And usually they don't.

We were a fast-growing company, and I was a demanding boss.

My men and I have decided that our boss, the president of the United States, is as tough as woodpecker lips.

So I still seized the power, but I felt that if I officially made myself the boss, in black and white, it would be too intimidating for the other producers and the other men who worked on the show. In other words, I had the power, but I gave them the title.

My boss told me to get my butt in gear. I told him I was shiftless.

Women is fine once you got em pinned down, boss, but when they ain't pinned down they're hell.

Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.

If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.