Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now?

When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.

Music changed my life. I don't know who I would be without it. Don't ignore even the smallest glimmer of passion in your soul, run towards it with everything you have. It could change your life.

From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn't need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation.

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

The first time I knew what I wanted to do with my life was when I was about four years old. I was listening to an old Victrola, playing a railroad song...I thought that was the most wonderful, amazing thing...That you could take this piece of wax and music would come out of that box. From that day on, I wanted to sing on the radio.