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

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

What I like to do is get the family in the pick-up truck… and then we just go for a drive. That’s it!

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

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 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.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

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

My first job was singing on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was about 10 years old, and I thought it was big time.

At first, I wasn’t really keen on the idea of me being on stage having to sing in front of people.

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

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

The first thing I look forward to when I am in Delhi is to spend some time with my family. It’s always lovely coming back here and playing in front of my own people. It’s just a special place.

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

I believe in singing.

Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it’s in the blood.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

I signed up to be a musician, I want to perform, I want to sing.

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

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.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

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.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

It doesn’t sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

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.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

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?‘

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

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 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.

I don’t travel with them, but they can’t be missing in my home. There have to always be dominoes… I used to play with my family – dad, my grandpa, my uncles.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.