“Little Willie John is the soul singer’s soul singer.”

For me, love carries the seeds of its own destruction.

Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.

I’ve never had any problems with women. Having been one of the world’s greatest womanizers they’ve probably had more problems with me.

If you escape from people too often,, you wind up escaping from yourself.

Don’t you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?

I wish that being famous helped prevent me from being constipated.

I am not a star. At least, I don’t consider myself a star.

Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough, to keep me from getting to you.

War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate.

And givin’ yourself to me can never be wrong.

An artist, if he is truly an artist, is only interested in one thing and that is to wake up the minds of men, to have mankind and womankind realize that there is something greater than what we see on the surface.

Marriage is miserable unless you find the right person that is your soulmate and that takes a lot of looking.

Music is one of the closest link-ups with God that we can probably experience. I think it’s a common vibrating tone of the musical notes that holds all life together.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

To share is precious, pure and fair. Don’t play with something you should cherish for life. Don’t you wanna care, ain’t it lonely out there?

Great artists suffer for the people.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.

I wanted to get my recording and become a musician again, work; with other people, do that kind of thing because I kind of got away from that for a while once we started happening, you know, selling records, sold out concerts.

If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music.

You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.

You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can’t do that if you’re a musician.

I’m not a jazz singer.

[Louis Armstrong] was the only musician who ever lived, who can’t be replaced by someone.