My friends gave me the first songs which was the first food in my soul for me.

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.

What Whitney Houston has accomplished will never be accomplished. She's the most famous person on the planet as far as vocaling and her songs. So I'm very happy that I can sit here and say I had a chance to know her. And I'm still dazed that she's gone. But she lives because her music is so powerful.

No matter how famous and established they were or however blessed they were with great songs or long careers if they lived alone they lived alone. That's not the way I wanted to live prior to the tour or after.

There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say 'Guys I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.

I became famous I think really because of the interpretation of other people's songs way back when and that's what I enjoy the most. And I'm a lazy bugger.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics whether it's with girlfriends boyfriends or family.

In my particular instance I came from a family that didn't have anything. Everything I earned in life I made. Myself. With songs that I wrote.

That sense of failure I don't know where people put it who don't write songs and aren't able to emote physically. It must go somewhere.

It was a very bizarre experience for me to get the songs together go in there and try to deliver them as I would perhaps in a live setting. But I realized that I couldn't take on that coffeehouse style that I came from and go in there and burn it up.

When you're a soul singer I'm singing a lot of songs about love and relationships that I think a lot of girls really relate to. For whatever reason that seems to get 'em excited. The DJ everyone always says the DJ gets all the chicks but that's never been my experience.

When I'm writing I'm constantly thinking about myself because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience but I know that my songs have validity to them and that's why the fans are there.

Yes all my songs come from personal experience and relationships.

I understand it's my role to realize people's dreams. I'm O.K. with that so long as my songs are my own. No one can take my songs away from me.

I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.

I have shared my whole life. My private and my show business life. It helps me actually to feel my songs and to go on with my dreams.

They should invent some way to tape-record your dreams. I've written songs in my dreams that were Beatles songs. Then I'd wake up and they'd be gone.

You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans with songs laughter dancing and a lot of wine.

I stay way from that area and there's only so many songs you can write about love sex and death.

The kids out there want something they can relate to something that's real most of that whiny stuff isn't real. The cheesy pop songs just bore me to death.

Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs.

But Dad and I are the only father-and-daughter acts who have both had No. 1 songs in England.

Dad really had little to do with the songs except to perform them.

I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country Waylon Jennings Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.