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" I think, as singers and performers, we are ambassadors of the human experience. I don't want to get bored just talking about myself. "

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" My mom has a couple great tricks, but my father is consistently a good cook. He's extremely avid about health and fitness and a bit obsessive. He always talks about garden-fresh food. "

" By high school, I was putting the music for the services together and teaching Sunday school to everybody's kids. "

" Where I come from, music is not a business. Sharing music is a business, but music is not a business. It comes from the people and belongs to the people. "

" I love songs that create moments that are very personal and that tell a story. "

" I'm a real Otis Redding fan, and I just think he sounds so good. He sounds like he's always at the end of a long day, and he just won't give up. I just love his wearied devotion - that beautiful, beautiful, weathered sound. "

" What I learned about singing in the church has gone into what I do now. "

" My father was very strict, a very militant parent, because he wanted us to be very focused kids. He sold the televisions, so we didn't watch TV. And he didn't want any music playing that wasn't gospel or inspirational music. In fact, he didn't even like a lot of gospel because he thought it was too bluesy. "

" I come from a family that has grown their own food from well into times of slavery, provided for themselves and people around them. So I found, through conversations about the earth and about the house with my neighbors, a lot of common ground. "

" As I grow older, I hope I can fully embody my grandmother's remarkable peace. "

" I've begun to realize, as I'm getting older, that I was taught to go for a certain kind of stillness to get things done. I missed that in my life. I loved my grandmother's property, out in South Georgia right above the Florida line, so I just thought I'd find some property where I could feel that again. "

" I want to record, tour, and just live life. "

" I'm a preacher's kid, I'm big-boned, I have giant feet, and I've always been able to run fast, and so I had this sense of, 'I can't fail. I'm invincible. I'm made of green juice and concrete; nothing's gonna happen to me.' "

" The truth is, when you want a great show, it's not 'entertaining' the audience - it's you sharing with them... an experience of communion. "

" Surrender is working with what happens. "

" Gardening is a working meditation for me. It helps me remember process, and it helps me remember patience. "

" I always want to do good work and enjoy doing it. "

" I see 'Grace' as an affectionate refusal of things that just aren't true. With all our power and money and influence, we still can't raise up high over people's consciousness. "

" Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it. "

" I get bored very quickly. "

" I have no ancestral link to the mountains. But I really do feel close to mountain culture. Their ways of food, of thinking. The way they hang out with no recording devices and just sing songs with each other. "

" Where I fit genre-wise, it's hard to tell. It's a fickle wind. But I have to believe there's always going to be a place for the songs inside of me. "

" The church is an institution of music and of production and performance, and it has to do with taking people to places inside of themselves and giving them an opportunity to sit deep in their own feelings, and to be together and deeply alone at the same time, and to process things. "

" There's a lot of pressure that comes from the mainstream stuff, and already people who have been saying - people who don't know any better - have been saying things to me like, 'You should really think about neosoul. You'd definitely be more successful in that.' But that's not my expression. "

" Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul. "

" I'd listen to the radio, especially when my parents were out on house calls to pray for people - you know, shut-ins. Sometimes, if we were incredibly sneaky, we could do it at night when everyone was asleep. "

" I never left jazz. The relationship between structure and improvisation - that constant conversation and tension - I've always wanted in every genre and song that I perform. "

" I didn't wait around for my parents' opinion about my venture out into contemporary music. "

" There's a beautiful, kind of seductive trap in being autobiographical in our writing of songs: We just get stuck in our own syrup, and it's so personal that it almost can be embarrassing to the listener. "

" Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment. "

" I'm in love with the way that Ella Fitzgerald delivered a lyric. She would deliver a lyric with the kind of clarity that would make you wonder why it was written, and make you think about the writer. I think every writer hopes an Ella of any genre or anytime gets a hold of their work and works the song like that. "