When I started to sing like myself - as opposed to imitating Nat Cole, which I had done for a while - when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchy, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it. It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it.

My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good.

Drunken talk isn’t meant to be printed in the paper.

Now Listen You know I work so hard, all day long Everything I try to do, Seem to always turn out wrong That's why I wanna stop by on my way home and say Let's go get stoned