My mom was the picture of the blue-collar mom: Two and three and four jobs to make sure that me and my sister never needed, that was her thing.

I don't want to call myself a perfectionist, because perfection is imperfection.

Auto-tune is good to keep your notes intact, but it doesn't do much for the feel of your voice.

Honestly, when I first heard that there were rumors out there about me being gay, I thought, 'Wow, someone must really hate me.' There's nothing wrong with being gay, but I just couldn't understand why someone would make up lies like that.

I never really created a difference between Shaffer Smith, my actual name, and Ne-Yo. They are kind of one in the same. It's been a bit of a gift and a curse. As far as Shaffer Smith is concerned, I've never viewed myself as a celebrity.

I've never been the guy to go for the celebrity girl. I've always liked regular girls, regular people, because I've always viewed myself as a regular person who just happens to be gifted in music.

The Auto-Tune makes everybody sound the same and takes away all of the emotion because you're singing through this machine, and of course your taking all of this emotion out of your voice for the most part.

My 'Slide Some Oil' ain't gon' be Nipsey Russell's 'Slide Some Oil.' Elijah Kelley's 'You Can't Win' ain't gon' be Michael Jackson's 'You Can't Win.'

With Jay-Z, it's hard not to be amazing.

I've spoken before on how the art of storytelling has been lost a bit. I definitely feel 'Empire' is helping to reprogram us back to that place where we pay attention and invest emotionally in the records and the artists.

'Madden' is the closest thing to actually being on the field yourself. It's so ridiculously realistic. Before I play it, I honestly didn't understand. 'What's all the hype? It's a video game'. Then I sat down and played it, and you feel like you're on the field.

My mom has always been a caregiver, and she's perfect in this role leading my foundation.

Beyonce's the kind of artist where you're not gonna see it till it's right.

I pride myself on being the type of artist who can work half in the R&B world and half in the pop world.

I'm good but not great at 'Madden'. I have friends that their whole life is based around this video game.

I'm gonna be honest: I was never really a fan of techno music, dance music.

Me as an artist, I'm more notorious for writing songs that celebrate women, songs that are all about the positive element of the immensely confusing creature that is woman.

We're falling into a place where melody is somewhat lacking in music. Everybody feels like, okay, too much melody or too much harmony, and it kind of goes over people's heads; they don't understand it.

Sammy was the only one that looked like me, so I naturally gravitated to him. Sammy made it cool to be black at a time when, let's just say it, it wasn't very cool to be black. His name was on the front of the building in lights, and he had to go in the back. But you never saw him sweat.

I'm a rather multifaceted person - or at least I like to fashion myself as such - so my dreams are multifaceted. For example, I had a dream of winning a Grammy, right? I've done that three times over.

Now that I have kids, I want my kids to appreciate my music, but at the same time, I don't want to teach them anything that they shouldn't know just yet.

I've never done this from a standpoint of, 'I want to be famous.' I sing because I love singing. I perform because I love performing.

You know what? At this point in my career, at this point in my life... I'm 34 years old; I don't have time to be hiding.

I wrote a song that basically turned into a public service announcement for the fellas out there, like, 'Should you run into this type of woman, run for your life!' So the name of the song is 'Run,' featuring the rapper ScHoolboy Q. It's one of the standouts on the album, in my personal opinion.

Ms. Clinton - Mrs. Clinton, I should say - she's a favorite of mine.

The story of 'Libra Scale,' the storyline was created first, and then the music was created around the story line.

Temptation is just that - she's the girl you claim you don't want, but in the moment, you have more drinks than you should in the club. One thing leads to another, and suddenly you've done something really stupid. You've jeopardized what could've potentially been a really great relationship, all due to temptation.

As an artist, you know as a person in the public eye, period, you kind of have a responsibility to the younger kids that are watching and emulating what you do.

There's a whole advantage being an executive as an artist.

I feel like my music is for everybody. As long as the music is good, I can please everybody.

Our founders recognized that 'men were not angels' and that checks and balances in government were critical to avoid threats to the rule of law.

It's such a dangerous thing for desperation to drive litigation.

Unanimity is important because it signals that the justices can rise above their differences and interpret the law without partisanship.

Justice Scalia was usually particularly challenging to me at oral argument, but I so respected his intellect and commitment to the pursuit of truth.

Some commentators have attacked the special counsel regulations as giving the attorney general the power to close a case against the president, as Mr. Barr did with the obstruction of justice investigation into Donald Trump. But the critics' complaint here is not with the regulations but with the Constitution itself.

The Mueller report is a long subtweet of the Barr memo and demolishes it and says that is absolutely wrong, and fundamentally, in this country, whether you are a high person or a low official, anyone can obstruct justice.

In our Constitution, our bedrock principle, you know - indeed, what the nation was founded on - is an idea of freedom of religion: that we don't single out people because of their religion.

I don't think the fact that something occurs in public or in private matters at all to obstruction of justice. I mean, if I publicly threaten the prosecutor who's investigating me, I don't think it'd be a particularly compelling defense to say, 'Oh, I did it in public.'

Independence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it is mutually exclusive with accountability. The more independence you give a prosecutor, the less you make that prosecutor accountable to the public and regular checks and balances.

I said that my parents had come from India. They thought America was a place where people were treated equally, and their kids would have an amazing life.

No one wants a president to be guilty of obstruction of justice. The only thing worse than that is a guilty president who goes without punishment.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States uprooted more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, and confined them in internment camps. The Solicitor General was largely responsible for the defense of those policies.

The Supreme Court has been very clear: when it comes to religious discrimination, you can take intent into consideration.

The nice thing about the 'House of Cards' is they did 70 takes, so it was a little different. You only get one at the Supreme Court.

One of our Constitution's greatest virtues is that it looks to judges as a source of reasoned, practical, rights-minded decision making.

President Trump has criticized the Mueller investigation, fired Jim Comey, savagely attacked the FBI, and repeatedly suggested the Russia campaign influence in 2016 was a hoax. In the wake of all of this, the American people need to be assured that Mueller can carry out his investigation without interference.

The upshot of the Nixon tapes case was that any president is going to have an extremely hard time resisting a request from a law enforcement officer.

Donald Trump is the swamp.

I've been in two different administrations, and I would say, particularly, President Obama was really careful to make sure that he wouldn't invoke executive privilege unless absolutely necessary. He only invoked it once in eight years, even though many years he had Congress opposed to him in terms of being from the opposite party.

It's definitely true that law enforcement investigations expand over time in appropriate ways.