“I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.”

My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I’m trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.

It’s time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.

It’s logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.

You can’t be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I’m very thankful for that. I’m very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.

I don’t like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.

I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.

Many times I feel different like a different person.

Music is one of the ways by which you can know everything which is going on in the world. You can feel through music. Whew you can feel the vibrations of everybody in the world at any given moment.

Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

It doesn’t matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That’s my stick.

To be young, gifted and black!

We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.

I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat – a sailboat. I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second.