The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough some of which go and others come.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

Change your opinions keep to your principles change your leaves keep intact your roots.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

All changes even the most longed for have their melancholy for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves we must die to one life before we can enter another.

The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta I saw the conductor - all conductors are white - ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.

Like all soul singers I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.

The thing about New York is you can leave your house without a plan and find the day. You can't do that in Los Angeles. You need to get in your car all this you can't just drive around like a lunatic. In New York you can literally walk outside and wind up anywhere.

My first car was an '84 Ford Taurus. It caught on fire from me trying to change the fuel pump so that wasn't good at all. Dried leaves on the ground while I was trying to change the fuel pump. Don't do that. Do it on concrete.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.