Ideally, I would love to mix singing and acting, but you can only be a pop star for so many years. I mean, at 30 it's a little bit sad, right?

It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality, not only by singing their parts to some of his artists, but acting out the smallest details, and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes.

You put a song on the record or on tape and you stop singing it. You just don't sit around and sing it anymore unless you're performing. That's kind of sad.

I like to express certain things that happen in my life, the joy of spring, the birds singing and young babies coming into the world. You know, the whole thing as well as the part I'm not happy with, the sad part.

My heart is like a singing bird.

That first snowdrop, the flowering of the rose you pruned, a lettuce you grew from seed, the robin singing just for you. These are smallthings but all positive, all healing in a way that medicine tries to mimic.

I've been singing for six years. I've been in and out of the studios with top producers, but it wasn't something I was ready to express to the public or to the press. I wasn't ready to come out. I wanted to perfect my voice and be 100 percent positive that I could come out right.

Good things are associated with blue, like clear days, more than singing the blues. Just the word 'blue' in the singular is full of optimism and positive connotation to most people.

The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.

At the beginning I wasn't really rapping. I had poetry, so it was a spoken word vibe. Then I found beats that you could sing over - lo-fi, ambient stuff. So I was singing over them and trying to put things into practice.

I was 25 myself once. I also thought I knew everything. I also thought that I could give singers singing advice and comics comedy advice. When you're that age, you know it all, so I understand it. But when you're tired and you don't have patience for it, you definitely snap.

I was a big Guns N' Roses fan when I was seven. My friend who lived across the street had long dark curly hair and I had long blonde hair, so I'd dress up as Axl and she'd be Slash, and we'd rock out in front of the mirror singing 'Patience.'

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.

My audience went, 'Wait, why is she singing jazz? What's going on?' And then they went, 'Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.' And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Music for me is not just being on a stage and singing. It's my coping mechanism.

I grew up seeing my parents perform and sing, and I just always wanted to be singing, too. Music has always been my deepest passion and what I felt most connected to.

English is like music. The English language is really fit for singing. The notes match the feelings, and it makes sense.

I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.

I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences a lot of my approach. And I think in many ways, naturalism has ruined movies.

I didn't know that I could do a talk show. I didn't know that we could bring variety to daytime. I didn't know that people wanted to see singing, and dancing and comedy in the morning.

I'm singing these songs to inspire you, to keep you going, to lift you up and give you a reason to get up in the morning.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!