“I have a faculty of memorizing any song or poem as I hear it, many, especially the old Scotch and Irish ballads I heard my grandmother sing when I was but a child.”

“I sit in my tree
I sing like the birds
My beak is my pen
My songs are my poems.”

“I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

“I like to take things easy. I don't constantly think about music. I never plan concerts, practise or even hum. When I go up on the stage, music courses through me. My family members attend my concerts because they do not hear me sing at home. I have entrusted you [Prince Rama Varma] with the task of popularising my style of singing among others, especially in foreign countries. I have heard some of your foreign students sing my compositions and was surprised. They sound better than many Indian students. I want to be known more as a composer than as a musician. You are now making this happen.”

“And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.”

“I'm glad I can be comfortable as an African and singing my YouTube language when I drop songs, I drop beat songs.”

“For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.”

“First of all, I was having fun. I was with a group of good-humored, cheerful, happy people. We were singing old protest songs and old Sunday school songs and clapping. I felt I had to be cheerful to set the tone. We didn't want any trouble or to do anything non-peaceful. Secondly, when I got arrested and the officers lifted me out I was afraid that America would see my underwear and that tickled me.”

“I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard you singing
Through the gloom.”

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”