“It’s very often the artist who gives a voice to the voiceless by speaking up when no one else will.”

I like simple things. Elastic waists, so I can eat.

The result [Republicans winning the Senate] would be devastating for reproductive choice, the environment, civil liberties, Social Security and health care, as well as corporate accountability.

I don’t feel like a legend. I feel like a work in progress.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.

I’m sure that I don’t know everything I want to know. I have so much more to learn.

My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don’t even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it’s like awards don’t mean anything.

It’s like an American tradition. A person gets successful and then he’s supposed to change for the worse. It’s silly.

The dream – you never achieve it. The excitement of life lies in the hope, in the striving for something rather than the attainment.

Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President.

Everyone has a right to love and be loved, and nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong.

I’m not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn’t talked about at all.

Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

Why don’t you have a cup of coffee at least? I, um, I’m a little low in sugar and I don’t have any cream, but it’s real coffee.

Around people I don’t know, I’m totally at a loss.

I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it’s graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It’s a wonderful thing.

Emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the “country” mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It’s such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta.

Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

One must turn the tongue seven times in the mouth before speaking.

Our own intuition of what we’re called to is reality speaking to us individually and perfectly. We have to listen to how the Infinite talks to us and leads us. Reality, Life the Infinite, God, has a way of leading us in just the perfect way, if we will only just listen to it.

My speaking is meant to shake you awake, not to tell you how to dream better.

I’m myself – knowing I’m doing a documentary and speaking with the people, telling them I have a bed, that I can eat every day, but I would like to speak to you. And they really gave me wonderful answers.