“Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now?”

If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be.

I gotta go on doin’ it the way I see it…I got no choice but to take it like I see it. I’m here to have a party while I’m on this earth..

You are what you settle for.

I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.

I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.

You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for.

It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned how to make feeling work for me…

What we’ve had to do is learn to control success, put it in perspective, and not lose the essence of what we’re doing – the music.

I started singing rhythmically, and now I’m learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it

Freedom is just another word for when you have NOTHING left to lose.

I think I think too much. That’s why I drink!

You’re only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody’s dishwasher that’s their own f***ing problem.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

I read, I painted, I didn’t hate niggers.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely.

It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness.

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.

I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.”

Women right now, we can’t make mediocre [stuff]. Men can and do make tons of mediocre stuff, but I feel like women.

I’ve never met anyone who has said, “My goal is to make America mediocre.” That’s a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

You shouldn’t be blamed for my standards being as high as they are. It’s just, I tasted the beauty of your love in our past life, and ever since then, I took an oath to never settle for any type of mediocre love.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.