My dad and mom believed that you do what you have to do in private and don't make a big deal out of it. Just try to help people as much as you can.

You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.

I'm looking at [my daughter] right now. To think that I am her dad is the greatest honor in the world. She's an amazing kid. We have a great relationship and she is one of my closest friends. I seek her advice. I like to know what she thinks about things, and she's helped me through some really tough times. I just look forward to years of developing that relationship.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.

I was raised in the environment where it really wasn't about sittin' around dreaming all the time, it was about practicing and workin' really hard and if a dream ever came to you, you'd be prepared for that opportunity.

I'm able to sometimes express things even more articulately on the piano than I am with singing.