“I was hopeless, now I’m on Hope Road.”

Everyone is in the same situation, at different levels and in different places.

The sweetest thing I’ve ever known was like the kiss on the collarbone.

In my family, there was not an abundance of wealth, but there was an abundance of love. So there was always humor, and there was joy and there was comfort and there was this environment just to have a good time.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

A lot of us are too busy focusing on what we think people want to hear, as opposed to just saying what’s in our hearts.

You improve yourself and light up the corner that you live on. You may not touch a gazillion lives, but you can light up your own space, light up your home.

I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first.

Whenever we submit our will to someone else’s opinion, a part of us dies.

See no one loves you more than me and no one ever will.

Anything that is not growing is dead.

I consider myself a crayon. I may not be your favorite color but one day you’ll need me to complete your picture.

The only way to know is to Live, Learn, and Grow.

If I’d known white people were going to buy my last album, I never would have recorded it.

You could get the money, you can get the power, but keep your eyes on the final hour.

It’s emotional warfare telling the people we love, the most, the truth about ourselves.

The less I have, the freer I am to do whatever I want to do.

True delegation implies the courage and readiness to back up a subordinate to the full; it is not to be confused with the slovenly practice of merely ignoring an unpleasant situation in the hope that someone else will handle it.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.

I learned everything the hard way – like, literally, everything. I know that God does that to people that he has lessons for. I just wish that I had learned less extreme lessons.

I just sing what I’m feeling at the time and hope my fans will like that and appreciate that.

At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.