I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

There is spontaneity to my work.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

The day I think I’m not enjoying the game and contributing the way I would like to, I’ll hang up my boots.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Music is something no one can control.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

A letter does not blush.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

Fighting football, not serenity football – that is what I like.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

You can stroke people with words.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

I only act from my heart.

When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn’t believe in.

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.