“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.”

I try to tell a story musically in a song.

I kept my babies fed. I could have dumped them, but I didn’t. I decided that whatever trip I was on, they were going with me. You’re looking at a real daddy.

I never learned to read or write music. Never wanted to fool with scales. That was boring, forced. The music I heard was free – flowing.

I’ll come to you with gifts of knowledge, wisdom and truth.

In my day, we didn’t have the cocaine, so we went out and knocked somebody over the head and took the money. But today, all this cocaine and crack, it doesn’t give kids a chance.

Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.

Most families had four, five brothers. But because it was just me and Darryl, we had to be twice as strong.

All I had was the will and the love for music. I couldn’t read music or write it. No connections, no car, no money, no bankroll, no clothes, no nothing.

People are always looking for me to be a freak, weird.

The cops picked me up for attempted murder. I can still see the detectives, licking their chops. Thought they had me. Two weeks later, the cat came out of a coma and told the truth. I was innocent.

I don’t know if it’s my music, my lyrics, my sound and knowing the music business the way I do – all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected.

I woke up when I was 14 and went to speak to my mother and scared us both to death.

When a man’s making love, the last thing he thinks about is war.

I’m very happy with this new record. It’s dealing with different aspects of love-it’s me making a statement about people doing something with their lives. It is about caring for others.

If you were a young kid, 19, 20 years old who has two children and a third one on the way and refuses to leave them.

There’s people making babies to my music. That’s nice.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance.

Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

I met a lot of the senior Taliban, and I asked them precisely [about Mullah Omar]. The most common answer was he is humble. And that was very true.

My family joke that I’m really a very senior person who accidentally happens to be 11.

Being a senior in high school means you’re not only getting closer to adulthood, but also ready to start thinking about your dreams and aspirations, whether that’s applying for college, joining the military, or seeing the world.

It’s never too early to start thinking of your future, so use these high school senior year quotes about following dreams to inspire yourself and those around.

Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.

I wasn’t really sold on being an artist until high school, my senior year. I was going to do the college thing originally.