“My father was a very disciplined singer who worked hard at his craft, and I was around that growing up.”

I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

You can try a new way of singing a song you’ve performed for years, a new way of showing your family your love for them, or a new recipe.

I want them to have this sense of real, real joy from the depths of their being. Because I think when you take them to that place, then you open up a place where grace can come in.

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.

And you realise you’re doing a public service in making people happy – as a musician you can give people something a doctor, a lawyer, a politician cannot give them that. It’s not scientific.

It’s not that I don’t love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.

Whenever I’m onstage, I try my best not to think that I’m performing. It’s simply another part of my day.

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us.

Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It’s open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that.

Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life.

I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.

Here’s a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don’t worry, be happy.

The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.

The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it’s the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We’re born with it.

Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn’t change the old racial order.

I was supposedly living this glamorous life, but I was crippled by the idea of growing old and where do I go next? The whole age thing—in our industry, it’s everything.

I certainly and deliberately introduced a great deal of variety into the people in the clamshell, which I suppose grows out of growing up in an individualistic society we profess to have.

We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?

Or we can keep moving forward with President Obama’s vision for a growing economy that works for middle-class families in North Carolina and all across the country. For me, for North Carolina and for America, it’s an easy choice.

God, she’s growing up, and I don’t know when it happened, man. I used to buy her Minnie Mouse panties and little Winnie the Pooh underwear. I was helping my wife fold cloths.

I have a lot of feminist idols. My favorite thing about growing up in Arkansas – well, not favorite but something I’ve always felt grateful for – was that I really had to dig for what I could. There was no Internet. There wasn’t tons of feminist literature floating around.

Give someone who has faith in you a placebo and call it a hair growing pill, anti-nausea pill or whatever, and you will be amazed at how many respond to your therapy.