Aaron Neville

When I'm singing, it's a mixture of my innocence in the projects, my mom and dad. It's all the good and the bad, the laughs and the frowns that I went through and seen other people go through. Then you be trying to write it. Whatever's coming out, you try and make it all cool.

Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.

You never know how much time you got.

Age and numbers are a concept made up by man.

The first time I recorded without Allen Toussaint, I wanted to do doo-wop. Everything I've done since then has got some kind of doo-wop essence in it.

When you were a kid, a day was a long time and a year was a long time.

When I was growing in the Callope project, we had an oval parkway. Pavement ran around this whole thing. We'd skate or ride bicycles. There were benches and trees out there. It was paradise to us. They finished building it the same year I was born.

I know the fact that I was born means I have to die, so my only aim is to reach out and help someone along the way.

Ain't no place like New Orleans. It's one of kind.

I never really got paid for 'Tell It Like Is,' but I look back at it and say God knew what he was doing; he probably figured that if I had got money back in them days, I wouldn't be here now. That's okay. I'm here. And I'm still singing the song.

I'm waiting for them to come up with a 'Star Trek' thing so they can beam me from my house to the gigs and back.

My mother turned me onto St. Jude back in the days when I was wild and crazy. She took me to the shrine on Rampart Street.