It's time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.

It's logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.

Music is one of the ways by which you can know everything which is going on in the world. You can feel... through music... Whew... you can feel the vibrations of everybody in the world at any given moment.

I was reared in the church from the age of three. I've played piano since I was three. I performed at revivals and for my people around North Carolina for several years. People around town collected money to send me to school.

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.

I have a cultured manner of speaking.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.