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

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."

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice?

The more excited the rooster gets, the higher his voice goes. He's got a little bit of a Barney Fife quality to him.

You'd have a good voice, if it ever came out of your throat.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

One needs a Seer's Vision and an Angel's voice to be of any avail. I do not know of any Indian man or woman today who has those gifts in their most complete measure.

It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.

We tune down a full step when we play but I never miss a note. I've learned how to keep my voice.

While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.

There's plenty for me to do. There are more albums. I'll record as long as I can and as long as my voice works as well as it does now and for as long as people want to hear me.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

John the Baptist was supposed to point the way to the Christ. He was just the voice, not the Messiah. So everybody's calling has dignity to it and God seems to know better than we do what is in us that needs to be called forth.

I found my voice was a reaction to all that voice stuff.

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.