Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.
I wanted to get out of Mississippi in the worst way. Go back? What I want to go back for?
If you got something you don't want other people to know, keep it in your pocket.
Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.
I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.
I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
To me, flying free is doing what I want to do, even if it's different from what everybody expects me to do. I'm flying free when I win the battle between me and the people who thought I should go down this road and I find my own road.
Give the public what they want. What you want is unimportant.
I want to direct. It's something that I know I'll be really good at.
Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, respect me, I'm a respectable grown-up, and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.
I want to be a mayor who helped, really helped.
We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
I treat others exactly the way I want to be treated.