All in all, it's been a wonderful, wonderful ride. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

I constantly tour, even when I don't have a record out.

I know I have sex appeal, but I've never felt like an actual sex symbol. Fans sometimes think I am. The majority of them are sweet about it, but occasionally somebody weird becomes totally fixated upon me.

It's just a whole different thing, and it's just that my life has been a blessing, and I thank god every day for the gifts that he has given me and for my daughter and to be able to watch her grow and be a part of her joys and her excitement and what she wants to do in life.

My first album came out in 1979.

They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I'm their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control.

You never know where a blessing can come from.

I just think it's a blessing that I was able to have the gift of words and to be able to put them into music. I was given a great gift all the way around. I didn't ever have to really go out and look for songs, you know.

I'm from California, and still live in LA.

I have a different mentality when it comes to catering to a man, I just won't allow it. Don't get me wrong, I'll do for you but I'm not taking care of no man and catering to him for life; he better be bringing something to the table. I learned that from my mother and my grandmother.

There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him.

I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion.

All in all, it's been a wonderful, wonderful ride. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels.

Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.

I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.

This is a gift. This is a gift from God. It's really like the old Biblical passage that talks about your body being a temple. That's not to say that I've never done anything but I've never abused myself. Never gone over the top for a long period of time.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

I have enough love to last me a lifetime! Thank God I'll never lose my imagination and my passion. That's really what it is. I'm still passionate about what I do.

I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano.

I would walk down the hall with my guitar and play for anyone that would listen. As a young kid I was really driven and I was going to make it happen no matter what.

OK, so truth hurts - but what else does truth do?

I always try to be a trend setter. That's what I always tell young people when I'm giving them advice. To go with their heart and don't follow the trends.

I have a deep affinity for New Orleans - its like a second home to me - they treat me like I'm their own.

I just really always try to do what's in my heart and I'm still passionate about the music; I still love what I am doing.

It is unseemly to undress on stage. I won't do that.

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.

I laugh at it now, but one time I had an agent tell me I would never work in TV if I didn't get a nose job. People tell you to change yourself to fit into the L.A. scene, but the advice usually doesn't make any sense. The next agent told me my nose was great!

Cycling is a great way to learn about your city. I love being outdoors, especially in good weather, but I'm not a fair weather cyclist. I'm happy to get a red nose in the cold.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty.

The goal is to keep yourself moving, remember? Don't linger. don't hover. you are not going to stay.

I have complete artistic control, and I just do my best album every time and trust it to fate.

Should l go on playing bridge and dining, going in the same old monotonous circle? It's easy that way, but it's a sort of suicide, too.

The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work.

One of the first things I did on arriving at school was to break my left arm falling into a bomb crater.

What I find really attractive is something that's going to be a little dangerous. Something that might get me into trouble; you know, you turn up in London and you've just rewritten Dickens. And, of course, then you think, 'What have I done?'

If a wolf attacks his sheep, the shepard kills the wolf, but he eats the sheep when he's hungry.

I like to believe that I've got a lot of guardian warriors sittin' on my shoulder including my dad.

Even if a minefield or the abyss should lie before me, I will march straight ahead without looking back.

We've seen so many films now, that you have to be on par with the best films that have preceded you. You just can't make any movie and it will be good.

I want to be the first guy to reverse a communist revolution.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just 'virtual reality.'

Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma, having undergone two remissions and a relapse, asked me to describe what she was battling. By the time I had finished answering her, I realised that I had written 600 pages.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.

When we contend, let us contend for all our rights - the doubtful and the certain, the unimportant and essential. It is as easy to contend, or even more so, for the whole as for a part. At the termination of the contest, secure all that our wisdom and valour and the fortune of war will permit.

Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate.

Everyones always scared for someone elses generation.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

You can't create chemistry. In fact, the chemistry between two actors is for people to see, sense, and judge. The only thing we can do as actors is to come on board individually because we feel the same kind of passion for a script and for a director to cast us because he feels that, as actors, we'll do justice to that part.