“It’s up to to you to perfect that gift that you’ve been given. Put your spirit into that song. Focus on the words that you are singing. Get into the experience that you are singing about and sing your heart out.”

You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.

Why has there never been a holiday where peace is celebrated all throughout the world?

There are a lot of things happening that show us that this, right now, is a time to love.

When I was a child, kids used to make fun of me because I was blind. But I just became more curious, ‘How can I climb this tree and get an apple for this girl?’ That’s what mattered to me.

I want to take all the pain that I feel and celebrate and turn it around.

Do you know, it’s funny, but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage.

Hold onto your dreams ’cause they’re always worth havin’. Hold on to your dreams til the day your life is said and done.

Just because a record has a groove don’t make it in the groove.

No one has been a greater advocate for the power of love in this world than I; both in my life and in my music.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.

I’m a work in progress, but if I know in my heart that I’m doing my best, that my heart’s in the right place, that I have unconditional love, I feel okay.

Gun violence is real. People don’t come back.

Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong.

Problems have solutions.

We all know that love is truly the key. Anyone who tries to make anyone think that things of destruction has anything to do with God or Allah, they’re a liar.

When you’re moving in the positive, your destination is the brightest star.

Sound is 50 percent of the movie going experience, and I’ve always believed audiences are moved and excited by what they hear in my movies at least as much as by what they see.

Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.

You cant build any kind of organization if you’re not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

Traveling around in a little tin box isolates one from the people and the atmosphere of the place in a way that I have never experienced before.

No 27-year-old has the experience to run a company that does a quarter of a billion dollars a year in sales.

Different experiences they shape and form our perspective.

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.