All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.

I've stepped more into my womanhood, I'm a mother now, I'm having a beautiful relationship as a wife and as a friend.

I come from a large family, with 16 cousins. My cousins studied well and moved to the U.S. When we all gathered together for special occasions, they would be well groomed and confident. I was the odd, useless one out. All I wanted was to be able to earn without my dad's help and be self-sufficient enough to own a house and a vehicle.

I went out on the road when I was 12 years old, playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. That was the summer of 1972. We played Pentecostal churches, camp meetings, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals. As a kid, I had grown up watching quartets that were very entertaining.

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.