“No one could understand the bond between me and my brother. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another.”

As a boy, I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken.

Mama tried to save us from the streets, but the streets were too strong.

There’s a time when people give their words to each other it has to mean something. I’m a street cat. I’ve belonged in gangs and when you had a partner, you went down with your partner whether you won the fight or lost it. You went down together.

I’ve always loved War’s Low Rider and Sly Stone’s Thank You, and I just wanted to put my take on them.

A kid who was on welfare, because he refused to steal anybody’s property or take anybody’s money. You found life a lot tougher.

Elton John’s opinion turned the label’s opinion around, all in a day.

I went to jail at 16 for stealing tires off Cadillacs. When I got out I said, Never again.

I didn’t mind working in the clubs, but I resented it being a club where pimps hang out. Because the music that I create is of a higher intellect than that. It not only encompasses pimps, but whores, ballplayers, executives… everybody.

Blacks own so little of the music business, it’s pathetic. But I see that changing soon. Black artists, black businessmen and women will unite.

When I commit, I commit with my whole heart, my whole being. I know the Bible like the back of my hand.

I quit high school on my birthday. It was my senior year and I didn’t see the point. This was 1962, and I was ready to make music.

The women used the music to get their men to relate to them better: “talk to me, tell me what’s on your mind.”

It’s ecstasy when you’re laying down next to me.

One preacher turned me on, another turned me off.

We are all gods, all forces of nature. We can destroy, we can build. We are like oceans and like fires.

Been making love for hours and, baby, we’re still going strong. Girl, this night is ours and I swear I feel it coming on. All I know is when we get through, I ain’t going to be able to move.

Boundaries, and countries, if we don’t have that we are all brothers and sisters, we can all have love and joy and compassion for each other: the world would be much more beautiful.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born..

Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.

My mother taught me to always be strong and always work hard. She’s been working hard her whole life for me and my brother. I’m a lot like her in that I work hard for what I want. She taught me that.

My mother was a champion high-jumper. My three brothers are basketball players. We’ve all been very athletic.

Wherefore, if meat causeth my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I cause not my brother to stumble.