“Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest.”

“Me? I'm loyal and honest, and I'm a good person. I call a spade a spade. Money doesn't make me; I make money. Without money, I'd be the same person.”

“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”

“I'm the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do.”

“I have always been a firm believer in God and the power of prayer, though to be honest, my faith has made for alist of questions I definitely want answered after I'm gone.”

“I look at the lyrics, and if that's something honest for me at the moment, I'll sing it.”

“I sing in the language of the Heart. It's an invented language that I've had for a very long time. I believe I started singing in it when I was about 12. Roughly that time. And I believed that I was speaking to God when I sang in that language.”

“I have had, for my entire life, an extraordinary esteem for the person and for the thinking of that great philosopher. But I do not believe that attitude gives me the right to say anything publically about him, for the good reason that I would have nothing to say that has not been said by others.”

“For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That's what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

“I've been called a termagent, but people BELIEVE in me. I'm a BIG personality.”