A real good artist learns to be a better person through all the changes they've been through. They keep their loving and honesty growing and learn to look at the world and not be full of hatred.

I was learning 'Changes' at the time that my mom was sick and she was leaving me. And those last verses in that song, they really struck my soul, totally.

When I got out of Job Corps, I was an empty shell. I didn't know what to do with myself.

James Brown really taught me a lot - his lyrics and his performance and whatever he does when he's onstage. I'll always call him a legend, and I'll always respect what he did.

Many readers fail to realize this, but 'The Color Purple' is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one's original God: the earth and nature.

Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed.

The world sometimes feels like an insane asylum. You can decide whether you want to be an inmate or pick up your visitor's badge. You can be in the world but not engage in the melodrama of it; you can become a spiritual being having a human experience thoroughly and fully.

I was raised in a reform synagogue. I think we all bring with us a sense of when hard things happen to us, we find ourselves asking questions of why are these things happening to me at this time in my life. I think in that sense, there's a certain resonance that I carry. It's more of a spiritual resonance as opposed to particularly of Judaism.