New York is really where my career somewhat started.

It taught the English to speak Spanish and it taught the Spanish to speak English. If we had more songs such as that, it would solve the immigration problem in a hurry. But there can't be another 'Feliz Navidad.'

I mean, it wasnt like I had said to myself beforehand, 'OK, I'm gonna go out there and sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in the weirdest way possible and cause a commotion.' I just sang it the way I felt it I sang it the only way I could.

In 1966 I recorded my first bolero album. I was about 18 years old then and I recorded it because I wanted my parents to know that I hadn't lost my identity of being Latino.

The day I stop learning and I don't try to make myself better on the guitar, that's the day I hang it up and say, 'Goodbye.'

As a Hispanic American, this country has done a lot for me, and I think that people have to be more grateful for what they have in this country.

Playing guitar was a calling, but I never realized that it was going to be a career. It was just something I did out of love.

I know Ritchie Valens in 1959 had 'La Bamba' but to be totally Spanish - because, you know, Ritchie didn't speak Spanish - but to be a total Latin artist like myself, to be out in a field where there weren't any categories for Latinos... I felt good that I was maybe - I didn't know it at the time - but I felt good that I opened the door.

If I were to travel with all my instruments, I would need a truck.

I'm Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

I was growing up at a time when music was growing and changing so fast. I had learned all the big band sounds of the 1940s, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. But then along came Chuck Berry, Les Paul, Fats Domino and I figured out how to make their music as well.

I just happened to be Latino, and like any artist, I was trying to forge a career. If I opened doors for others, that's great, but nobody starts out with those aspirations.

God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and bitter. He gave me music, first to be my companion and then to be my salvation.

I just do my thing, what I feel.

I'm in a museum. I'm a relic.

I always tell my wife she's married to the Puerto Rican Elvis.

I sang the National Anthem with soul.

In 1970, my label decided I should do a Christmas album and I put a bunch of tunes together. We couldn't decide what to call it and so I said 'Why not just say Merry Christmas in Spanish? Feliz Navidad.' They said, 'That's cool, Jose, but we need a title song.' So I just sat down and started to play.

The fact I'm blind has been a great help to my career. If I'd been sighted I'd have played baseball and got into trouble like all other kids on my block.

I'm kind of iffy on the Latin Grammys because I think we fought so hard, for example, to get the American side of the Grammys to open categories for us... But I support the Latin Grammys in the sense I'm glad that we have them.

One thing about computers and iPhones is they're making people mentally lazy.

Pioneers will always get the stones, when everyone later gets the accolades.

I'm very proud being Puerto Rican. I'm American. That is what America is made of - people from different lands.

Now everybody has been doing the national anthem in their own style, but in 1968 I was the one that took the heat. It cut my career for quite a while.

I went through the immigration thing. But when I got to New York it wasn't so tough for me. I went to school. I went to P.S. 57, then I went to the Lighthouse for the Blind on 59th St. I guess being blind is a great leveler.

The accordion was the first instrument I played, when I was 7 years old.

I don't think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player - he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I'm an artist who happens to be Latin.

I've been a fan of Elvis since I was 11, so for me, it was a real thrill to make an album of all my favorite Elvis songs.

People are really surprised by the fact that I keep in touch with the latest trends rather than retreating to the distant past.

I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

When I was 15, I became an avid fan of Andres Segovia. He brought so much respectability to the guitar.

From 1969 to 1973, I was never played on radio stations.

I don't think kneeling during the anthem is such a bad thing.

No one can pigeon-hole me because I play everything, and I did that on purpose.

When my career took off it surprised me, I was only 22. To have that much success so fast, I just wasn't prepared.

When you've had a chance to live some experiences then you can really write, and not having lived that much when I was young I didn't have much to write about. Now having seen life, the songs seem to come easier.

If I've influenced people, so be it, but I don't dwell on those kinds of things. I just put out my music. If I influence someone without knowing it, I'm happy about it. I try not to think about those things because it's not about me.

I like Maroon 5, Swedish House Mafia and others.

When I did the national anthem, I did a soulful, kind of gospel-y version, but it was controversial with the war veterans, just the people who wanted to hear it the old, clinical, atmospheric way, and I didn't want to sing it like that.

I was the first artist to put the national anthem on the charts, and I'm thrilled.

I didn't have romances when I was in school. Girls didn't want to go out with me because I was blind.

I became a teen idol. At the time, it embarrassed me.

I always wanted to be the first true Latino to break the American barrier, to be on the American charts.

RCA wanted me to change my name. They asked me around 1965, when they first signed me. They said, 'Feliciano is too Latin.' I said, 'That's who I am. I'm Jose Feliciano.' They wanted me to change my name to Joe Phillips.

I thought I'd be spending my life making brooms, mops, chairs and things. That's fine for some blind people, but I wanted something more out of life. Music seemed the best way.

Actually, being blind is not so bad. If you're born this way, you never know anything else and you don't wonder about it. Though I'd hate to have lost my sight after being able to see.

Music made me feel like I was sexy. Music made me feel like I wasn't just a blind guy.

Feliz Navidad' has interfaced the English and Spanish cultures to come together and after all, we're living in a multi-cultural world.

I never knew Mother Teresa, but I admired her, especially in this day and age when there aren't many heroes.

I made history and nothing can besmirch that. Nothing can erase that.