When I would be on the stage singing, I would see a movie of something that happened, I would be telling the story. I would be describing the story in sound, but my goal would be to make somebody else run their own movie.

When the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky.

Everybody has their own level of doing their music. ... Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with a significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally.

Your musical soul is like facets of a jewel, and you stick out one facet at a time ... (and) I tend to work real hard on whatever it is I do, to get it up to speed, up to a professional level. I tend to bury myself in one thing for years at a time.

I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song.

I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.

I never went to the Beatles' concerts to scream. I never screamed at anybody's show. I was on my feet with the entire, all of the crowned heads of Motown, and we were shrieking our guts out.