Ray Charles Quotes

When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music.

I have tried, in all the ways I can, to make timeless music.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

I'm still trying to make it. I'm still trying to get this over and do it and hopefully leave some kind of a mark on the course of American music, particularly in the tradition of what you might call the singer-songwriter.

Music is in my DNA!

I have loved music so much from when I was little, and I don't know whether it was because I saw my dad doing it and then I got the idea; I don't know what came first... But I always had a hairbrush in the mirror singing. I was always with him backstage; I would go out and be pulled in for the last song.

People like Prince don't have to care about anything, but they care because they want music for the future to be great.

Progressive music probably wouldn't even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture.

Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own.

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn't learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot.

Music has always been a huge part of my life from a very young age, and today it remains a very powerful and natural way for me to connect with people, as well as my children.

I love music, I love all kinds of music, particularly jazz. Jazz is an extension of America. There's no other country in the world that could have produced jazz.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

I get a wave of pride in America when I look back at what we've accomplished in the field of music.

I love the pioneers like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, but when I write music, it comes out in my own way.

I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background, which was rock and blues and hip-hop.

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile.

I've always had music in my blood.

There are more inspirational people in music than there are in politics.

I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind.

If music leaves any impression at all, it does so without regard to stylistic issues.

My father, a mining engineer and colliery manager, gave his brood many advantages not least of which, for me, was his love of singing which gave music a central place in our lives.

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.