I have to be happy in the here and now because every time you start focusing on your legacy you're really setting yourself up for disappointment.

I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.

Sinatra, here's a guy who plays a tough guy in all his movies, but was allowed to be vulnerable when he stepped up to the microphone.

Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.

For years I've kept a list of dream projects.

It's understanding the intention of a composer that allows a producer and an arranger to make those moments speak.

You're presuming too much by using the word legacy - presuming that someone is going to care.

We used to call it recurrent airplay when someone had a hit.

Black music has increased my enjoyment of what I do. It has increased my range, my ability to reach into myself and accept myself.

A lot of my success comes from black music. It's something I'm very proud of.

There are certain people who have become better artists, but they're brilliant at marketing. I think someone who's been phenomenal like that is Madonna.

You can't make everybody love what you do, but you can know how great you feel doing it.

It's a combination of melody and lyrics, not one without the other. It's a confluence of these different elements that makes something powerful.

I have friends who've tried to break into the UK, who went back with their tails between their legs. Fortunately I've had the opposite experience.

No matter how great we get with digital formats of instrumentation, nothing really quite duplicates the real thing.

Dr. King is so inspiring, so impressive, so moving as a human being.

I'm proud of my mentors. Ray Charles is the strongest influence on me as a singer.

The Top 40 is geared toward 20 and under, not 20 and up. That's the audience I'm geared to.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.

To sing along with Stevie Wonder, you had to make your voice do things it was not accustomed to doing.

I was blown away by the control and the range that I was hearing. I'm listening to Pavarotti and thinking, What the hell have I been doing with my voice all these years?

It's an important thing to remember where you came from.

When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.

When I started studying for the arias it was like going into training for a heavyweight title fight.

A lot of the greatest compositions were made famous by Sinatra.

I have to be happy in the here and now because every time you start focusing on your legacy you're really setting yourself up for disappointment.

With the internet, things are so much more immediate. People taste-test things to see if they want to buy the CD.

The bigger you are, the harder they come down on you.

I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.

When I was invited to sing with Pavarotti, I had about two weeks to learn Italian.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time.

One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist.

On singing in the swimming pool: "If I can move the water, I can move the people."

Music is 10% exhilaration and 90% utter disappointment.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

Yet there is disappointment in Washington and in the United States that Canada is not supporting us fully.

Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives.

Obviously the first sentiment is disappointment that we didn't get the car home and more disappointment that at the time that it stopped the car was in the lead.

Aware that his disappointment has its source in a defective education, he looks with anxiety on his other daughters, whose minds, like lovely buds, are beginning to open. Where shall he find a genial soil in which he may place them to expand?

I think the intelligent thing about it is that you have to carefully listen to it all to grasp it, and because I'm not in every scene - colossal disappointment to everybody that it may be - I'm not getting the full picture here today while recording it.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.

Kids now are so used to surround sound and the power in theater speakers, that the concert hall is a disappointment to them.

Suspense is worse than disappointment.

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.

It's a disappointment to lose key players. On the other hand it creates an opportunity to play other players.