“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.”

I’m so thankful that your mine, your sweetness is my weakness.

You’re the first, the last, and my everything and the answer to all my dreams. You’re my sun, my moon, my guiding star, my kind of wonderful, that’s what you are

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was a born club comic. Radio and TV and stage were fine, but I found my real home in cabaret.

The Infinite Universal Power is more than just a narrow-minded gatekeeper to a spiritual County Club.

I managed lots of clubs. I had more clubs than Jack Nicholson

A lot of Donna Summer and things that maybe weren’t trendy anymore or weren’t hip in gay clubs but you’d hear them at Taboo.

I think the comedy clubs tend to homogenize the acts a little bit, because they force them to be palatable in way too many environments.

Nobody ever swung a club too slowly.

I still remember the first gig where I got people going, it was Rascals in New Jersey, and the place was packed. I was scared. People were expecting me to be funny. I gotta be honest, every time I walk into a club, it’s that same fear.

Marijuana? It’s harmless really, unless you fashion it into a club and beat somebody over the head with it