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.

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?‘

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

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.

Becoming a ‚Sir‘ is slightly uncomfortable at first, although it is a considerable honor. It is amazing how quickly you become accustomed to it.

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.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I’d call and pretend I was Lady Gaga’s manager.

I didn’t have to win, and winning wasn’t important to me. Being world champion wasn’t important to me. 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.

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.

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

A lot of churches have not moved with the times.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

I’m a day-to-day-type person.

In one day, I have times where I’m feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I’m the angriest man alive. My wife sees 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.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

A bachelor’s life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.

I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

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.

Working out anchors my day.

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

I had to get rich so I could sing like I was poor again.

I have spent every New Year’s Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It’s a place with meaning for me.

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

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

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.

There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. I’ve been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. It’s all I know.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

Nothing burns more calories than dancing in 5-inch heels… try it!

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.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

I’ve conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I’ve sang and danced at La Scala!

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

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’ve been singing Shakira songs in front of my bathroom mirror into my hairbrush forever. It’s like a daily routine.

Get off your horse and drink your milk.

I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason – to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

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.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

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.

Every day is a major balancing act that I have to figure out and coordinate.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

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

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

I’m half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I’d be in a hell of a mess!

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

My dancing is Hawaiian-inspired but I also get a little fresh when it comes to my faster songs.