I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

My father had a varied ear, from Hank Williams to Ravel.

I'm very conscious of developing my singing, technically and stylistically. I want it to become more individual, express more of me. That's my goal. These songs are steps along that way.

I love playing to people and seeing them react.

Seeing how those companies operate, it didn't amount to a massive vote of confidence in their artists. There was talk of me going to Columbia after that, but nothing happened. I got disillusioned, and I pulled back.

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.

It's wonderful to work with someone with mentor status.

Once I was in the city, I really enjoyed it. Just to experience things. There was so much new stuff.

I had my guitar and some talent so that I could make friends with intelligent people and could talk my way out of difficult situations.

I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a bunch of people that are on a long list of artists. They were important to me, especially as an early adolescent.

I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs, she played them by herself and I so admired her for that.

I've always loved singing. I find it exhilarating.

No matter where we come from or where we're going, we've all got memories to contend with, and it's always best not to do this alone!

Second records aren't usually very good. Even Bob Dylan's was a bit disappointing.

You have to let it all hang out, let go of the ideas that were more comfortable and embrace some of the sadness in your life.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

I was just a big guy running down with a big, deep pocket and little short stick putting it against my chest.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

As a scientist, my attention became totally focused on global warming some 15 years ago by the elegant and powerful measurements of carbon dioxide trapped in ice cores taken as much as 2 miles deep from the great East Antarctica ice sheet.

No matter how deep a study you make. What you really have to rely on is your own intuition and when it comes down to it, you really don't know what's going to happen until you do it.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.

He saved the production a tremendous amount. Now they did the scene where Omar is on the horse and he's in the deep snow, they went to Finland to do that. That scene they went to Finland for a week. I wasn't around then.

We have deep depth.

Nothing said to us, nothing we can learn from others, reaches us so deep as that which we find in ourselves.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.

Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.

Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.

When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.

I think doing something of your life is something that you've got deep inside, whether it's to, whether you want to be an astronaut or a, whether you want to do science, or whether you want to be a movie star, or whatever.

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

The musical heritage of Yorkshire is deep and wide.

In an age where history is recorded on T-shirts, the very notion of dwelling on the deep structure of an experience has come to appear both arcane and archaic.

I'm not just a politician, I'm a guy who has a real deep, substantive, commitment to education.

There's no huge, deep message in any of the songs. We recorded a few months of being human.

I thought people cared about music in a deep way, so I was writing to that spirit in people and in myself. It was me, thinking I knew what was up. Youth, who else can change the world?

The sacrifices made by veterans and their willingness to fight in defense of our nation merit our deep respect and praise - and to the best in benefits and medical care.

Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.

Many of the master chefs in the South, both the upper South as well as the deep South, were blacks and many of those people came here to Washington, D.C., and opened up establishments. Very, very few of them have survived. But they certainly were very prominent.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.