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.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

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

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

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 train and I go home, and when I’m home, I think about training. That’s my life every day, and that’s it.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn.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.

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.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

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

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

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.

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

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.

I’m not a health freak. I just work out every day.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

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

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

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.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

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

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.

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.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass – the slave narrative – speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying ‚I,‘ meaning ‚we.‘

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

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 prefer musicals, because I am the best dancer who ever lived. The best plies, the best sashays, and by far the best-smelling Capezios.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

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

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

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

I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.

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

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

At the end of the day, I pray for the best.

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.

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

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.

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

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

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

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

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.