I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it.

One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.

You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.

As a child, I went to peace and ERA marches on the back of my mom and grandmother. Through them I learned that I wanted to find a way to make the world a more kind, compassionate place.

In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.

Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy.

Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence.

If we do not need to worship God six days in the week why do we need to worship him on the seventh?

Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken.

The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.

If God exists, what objection can he have to saying so?

If there were no ministers and no priests, how long would there be any churches?