“Music is an art and art has its own rules.”

I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs and good ones.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.

I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me And I’m feeling good I’m feeling good.

I’m just human, I have faults like anyone.

I do love to sing Jacques Brel songs, intensely. I get terribly excited, just by reading a couple of lines in any one of his songs.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day and I’m feeling good.

You don’t have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.

I don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

The worst thing about that kind of prejudice is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.

I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.

I’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.