There were pockets of this career - whatever you want to call it - where I said, 'I've tapped out. I don't want to do this. I'm gonna go be a stage hand. I don't want to do this. I don't want to talk to people. I'm afraid of people. I'm going to walk away from everything that this was and is.'

What is so beautiful about a composer and a lyricist is that their job is to push a story along and not halt it.

I was causing trouble in high school, and in order to get me to stop and to pass, they put me into theater, and I ended up winning a Shakespeare competition. All I had to do was imitate people properly, and I ended up going to the finals when I was about 16.

I used to be a pop singer; well, not used to be. I am an R&B singer. My emphasis was on Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan and Aretha Franklin.

Cancer is just one little word but, when you hear it, it turns your whole life upside down.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Conservatives shouldn't count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America - and for that matter, the future of limited government - depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people.

I worry about dying all the time so I worry about my health. I don't want to die because I absolutely love my life.