I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing ‚Happy Birthday.‘

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.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

When you’re all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

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.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

A chorus is not easy.

If it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

Aside from singing, I’m also a dancer. I’ve been dancing since I was 8.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

Occasionally, some brother sings very earnestly through his nose, often disturbing those around him, but it does not matter how the voice sounds to the ears of man. What is important is how the heart sounds to the ears of God.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I’m singing now is what makes the money.

You aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

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. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

I’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.

An operatic voice is like no other.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

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.