“You have to be who you are, and hopefully they dig it.”

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I don’t like two stories. I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know.

I don’t try and be dark, but there are obviously darker emotions that I want to capture sometimes.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Treasure, that is what you are.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

I think that success is having fun.

Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I’m going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It’s always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.

To write a song you must have an imagination, to have an imagination you must be free.

If I was a billionaire, I’d be smart with my money.

Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that come with fame – it’s what people in the limelight have to do.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

People can hear my songs are coming from something real. I mean what I say; I’m not just writing to impress critics or young girls, or older girls. The way I talk is the way I write a song.

My dad was just the king of finding these little spots for us to stay that we should never have been staying at.

There will never be another Michael Jackson, a huge pop star since (the age of) 7.

When I see your face, there’s not a thing that I would change ’cause you’re are amazing just the way you are.

Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.

The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.

When you finally accept that it’s OK not to have answers and it’s OK not to be perfect, you realize that feeling confused is a normal part of what it is to be a human being.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

If life isn’t about human beings and living in harmony, then I don’t know what it’s about.

I agree that faith is essential to success in life, but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death.

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.

I won’t admit or deny anything, makes me more interesting.