The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
I'm going to keep on keeping on as long as I've got my health and strength, and God gives me that will to do it.
To be honest, I didn't think I would be here for this album [Give the People What They Want]. I thought I was going to die. When the doctor came in by himself and told me I had cancer, it was frightening. He told me he got it and there would be six months of chemo. I really thought people would be promoting my record without me here to enjoy it. But I'm here.
My friend Megan Holken is a nutritionist. I have spent some time at her home upstate in Sharon Springs, where she told me how to eat right and cook right.
I often call Daptone the Motown and Stax of today. But in some ways it's different. At Motown, a lot of the musicians didn't get recognized, music got stolen, and people didn't get paid. Or the label would just throw them a pinch of money for their songs. That is one thing we're not doing. Anything anyone writes here, we get a percentage.
My fans have written me such kind emails. My management at Daptone helped me heal, too. I'm in a good place.
The only thing I wanted to accomplish was to finally get recognized by the music industry. If you know the awards, answer me this question: Do you see an award for soul music? No. They have R&B, funk, hip-hop and all sorts of contemporary things.
But really, the term “forgive and forget” doesn’t make sense to me. Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn’t always healthy. But if we forget, we don’t learn from our mistakes. And that can be deadly.
I never saw [Allen Ginsberg] as some kind of crazy figure.
If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition.
I think that others can drive a creature to naughtiness, always accusing and blaming them. After a while it must make the creature unhappy and drive him. . . to be naughty, because nobody expects them to be good.