I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I'm helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.

I couldn't do anything without faith. I couldn't open up my eyes, I couldn't walk, I couldn't speak, I couldn't sing.

Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you...out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally.

Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion — you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.

I don't want anything to get in the way of me and my singing. I want my mind as clear as possible.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.