During the holidays everyone needs a break from studying for exams and Christmas shopping. I wanted to put together a diverse tour that rocks in many musical directions but always points to Christ.

I loved 'White Christmas' for the music aspect. I was into musical theater.

I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't I've written 14 musicals now I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I actually may do a musical next year... not one that I've written one that I may star in. Plus my concert and other people's work and all of a sudden you've got a very full life.

I'd like to say I'm R&B's savior. Whether that's the truth or not I'm definitely going out there with my mic and my shield to declare 'I am here to save R&B.' I will have the people saying 'Sir there is a man at the musical gates saying he is here to save R&B.'

I was in the studio so much it was about the search for air in a metaphoric sense and the breathing has more to do with travel for me about the search musically for open air.

The technology is good and it's bad. You know what you're dealing with out there musically but my head stops at this electronic stuff. I don't quite know what I'm dealing with out there yet.

I got picked on a lot even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking.

We're in a period where society seems very attracted to flash and that seeps into people's musical taste.

I wake up each and every day with a smile on my face knowing I get to do something musically.

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre which at one time offered great musical opportunities.

In our culture we have such respect for musical instruments they are like part of God.

First play I ever did was 'Footloose.' I played the part of Willard when I was 16. I think I wore my drama teacher's jeans and her belt - that's how small I was. I know a lot of Willard's back story from the musical that's not explored in the film. Like he's got this whole relationship with his mama and he sings this song 'Mama Says.'

Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own which is not to say that the instrumentation is always unique but that the relationship between the sound and the image is unique.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

The lines of poetry the period of prose and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

I find that classical music helps put me in a place that is very calming and allows me to express emotion through my body. I played clarinet as a child so I guess I have a bit of a musical ear.

I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be.

Although they can do it all the time you know they're far better than me on a musically on a theoretical music level. You know they're out of my league.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade a musical idea no matter how innovative is threatened.

I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic sexy but classy all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music then the lyrical content starts to come - you know the stories and things like that.

Music's been around a long time and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record that's the frosting on the cake but music's the main meal.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel it needs to be hybridised.

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.

I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

I met Prince William at a musical festival and he let me know he was a fan of my music. But the invitation to sing at his wedding reception came completely out of the blue. The fact that Kate and William knew the words to my songs was very touching.