"L.A. is always great. There's something special about L.A. And New York, for me, because it's home. There's nothing quite like walking onstage at Madison Square Garden."

"I still hold on to the idea that a record can really change the way I feel."

"I go to a very visual place when I'm singing. It's very cinematic and I get this feeling of space. I love when music does that."

"'Presence of God' is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what's going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking."

"White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes, but hip-hop and R&ampB changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied the culture. It's kind of a cool thing because we shouldn't be so separate."

"Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society."

"But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history."

"When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous."