Earth, Wind & Fire was something new. I wanted to bring something innovative to the music. It was out of a desire to create excitement with music that was pleasurable to play and listen to.

From my youngest days, I always felt certain affinities with the idea of being a preacher.

Most people can't see beauty and love. I see our music as medicine.

We've been called the soundtrack of people's lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive - we're like a good book that people go back to.

My books are inert as cordwood till a reader's imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.

When you see the best of the best - when you see a Matisse or a Picasso - what interests you is the creativity and harmony.

Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.

Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.