You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.

From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.

I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.

I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be

The pressure of show business is on all the time and show business is a fickle business. Whatever is popular now - that's all that counts. I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I'm doing and why.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.