“Bring the brothers home, and sisters home now. Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.”

There is no person that love cannot heal; there is no soul that love cannot save.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

There is nothing more contagious on this planet than enthusiasm.

The best part of touring, still, is touching people’s hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.

Everything is a battlefield. If you fight with anger, you are part of the problem. If you fight with joy, you’re part of the solution.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain… you hear them and they’re affixed to you.

One day there will be no borders, no boundaries, no flags and no countries and the only passport will be the heart.

If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.

Your wrinkles either show that you’re nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you’re always smiling.

You’re always cursing, you’re always praying and you’re always making love. It ain’t do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

I’m laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.

I am here to give voice to the invisible.

I have wisdom. I feel love. I live in the present and I try to present a dimension that brings harmony and healing.

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there’s always a melody in there.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that’s what it’s all about.

I kind of knew something was going on, and my older brothers and sisters were singing be-boppish kinds of stuff in the living room.

I love music; my dad and brother were very musical, and music just happens to be one of my hobbies that became my vocation.

Butch, you come from DeWitt Clinton. There are five thousand brothers in that school.

Music is more of a hobby to me than my hobbies, if that makes sense.

I started to take a keen interest in food when I was 16 years old.

When I was a young teenager my mother always encouraged my brother, my sister and I to get involved in the kitchen.

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.

I first heard Laura Branigan sing live in my brother Nesuhi’s apartment, where we had gone because he had a very good piano. I immediately realized that she had a great pop voice, in the classical sense.