Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

Change is such hard work.

Michael was so shy, he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat with my hands over my eyes-and the lights off.

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

I've met every freak in the business.

Did you know you would become as successful as you have? Hell, no. But you know what? You were prepared, baby.

I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.

I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.

You have to know that your real home is within.

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.