“When I'm singing, it's a mixture of my innocence in the projects, my mom and dad. It's all the good and the bad, the laughs and the frowns that I went through and seen other people go through. Then...”

“Doo-wop is the true music to me, man. Doo-wop was what nurtured me and grew me into who I am, and I guess even when I was in school, the teacher probably thought I had ADD or something every day, b...”

“There are so many songs in my heart and in my brain. I wake up at 2 in the morning, and I have to get up and sing them. There are so many of them, it's ridiculous.”

“I was raised Catholic, but my father's people were Methodist, so we went to both churches.”

“I buried Joel on our 48th anniversary. I had been with her since I was 16.”

“'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, ...”

“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”

“We limit ourselves and God who wants to work through us”

“God can only work through those who have totally identified themselves with His will and purpose”

“I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.”

“Thank God I'm an atheist.”

“Nowadays, everybody assumes, when they wake up in the morning, if they have a question, it will get answered. Because they have the internet. No matter what the question is, someone will answer the...”

“I mean, if you have to wake up in the morning to be validated by the editorial page of the New York Times, you got a pretty sorry existence.”

“I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.”