Music has been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to leave my mark, leave something musically good behind.

Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.

Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when …

I believe that any 'awareness' of life is 'spiritual' since awareness can only be a quality of the spirit not of the material world or of matter and machines. …

'I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?'

Music is for me like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate th…