“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.”

“Until things are brighter, I’m the man in black.”

“How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”

“There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.”

“She’s the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close.”

“For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide.”

“There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.”

“If this were a movie I’d be the bad guy.”

“I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they’re no good. I don’t throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.”

“When I record somebody else’s song, I have to make it my own or it doesn’t feel right. I’ll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn’t know it!”

“If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.”

“The only time to eat diet food is when you’re waiting for a steak to cook.”

“Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.”

“I know that two and two make four – and should be glad to prove it too if I could – though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.”

“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”

“Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.”

“I want to take Negroes out of the ghetto and put them in good neighborhoods in good houses.”

“I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control. I feel that what I’m thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!”

“Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”

“I’m the man you think you are. If you want to know what I’ll do, figure out what you’ll do. I’ll do the same thing–only more of it.”

“One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.”

“Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.”

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”