I quit high school on my birthday. It was my senior year and I didn't see the point. This was 1962, and I was ready to make music.

Blacks own so little of the music business, it's pathetic. But I see that changing soon. Black artists, black businessmen and women will unite.

Everyone to me has to pick a subject to talk about in music if you're going to be a writer.

The women used the music to get their men to relate to them better: "talk to me, tell me what's on your mind." Men used the music to get the girls in the mood to make love. So either way you had it, Barry White is the one artist who actually was in your bedroom with you at your most sacred, sensuous moment of your life.

If you were a young kid, 19, 20 years old who has two children and a third one on the way and refuses to leave them. A kid who was on welfare, because he refused to steal anybody's property or take anybody's money. You found life a lot tougher.

Elton John's opinion turned the label's opinion around, all in a day.

I try to tell a story musically in a song.