I write with my brain. I don't need a computer.

I liked the Doors and that kind of music.

I don't know if it's a legacy, but I love it. In my mind and other people's minds, they know I was the first to stylize the national anthem.

When people don't hear you on the radio they think 'maybe he retired.'

I got tired of seeing people rush through the national anthem so they could have their popcorn and get to the game. Nobody ever sang the anthem with soul. It was always done clinically and they always stuck to the original. I put feeling into it. I sang it in a soulful manner.

I'm a one-man band!

I truly enjoyed the '60s.

You can't write much quality, original music on a concertina.

I was drawn to the guitar, and still am, because it struck me as the most soulful instrument.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 like Maroon 5, Swedish House Mafia and others.

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.

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.