I'm not terribly happy about rock and roll. Certain rock music is uninspiring, numbing it makes you feel like an idiot.

Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It's hard to say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me?

We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle.

I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere... Being a human being is what truly counts. That's where you'll find me.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.