“I think of music as a menu. I can’t eat the same thing every day.”

Everything is a battlefield. If you fight with anger, you are part of the problem. If you fight with joy, you’re part of the solution.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain… you hear them and they’re affixed to you.

One day there will be no borders, no boundaries, no flags and no countries and the only passport will be the heart.

If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.

Your wrinkles either show that you’re nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you’re always smiling.

You’re always cursing, you’re always praying and you’re always making love. It ain’t do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

I’m laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.

I am here to give voice to the invisible.

I have wisdom. I feel love. I live in the present and I try to present a dimension that brings harmony and healing.

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there’s always a melody in there.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that’s what it’s all about.

The more choices we give patients affected by depression, the better we will serve them.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war. As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets.

There’s a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.

Be not entangled in this world of days and nights; Thou hast another time and space as well.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

It’s much more fun to be full of hope than pessimism any day of the week.

Whenever I have a bad day I just think of these people.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

I don’t think I’ll ever act again. I have so many wonderful memories, but those days are over.

If you really want your hair to look good, just don’t wash it for a day. That’s my secret.

My advice to teens is to try and do something that scares you every day because it’s the only way you can test how far you can really go.