You know I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek to Mos to DJ Quik to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.

I've had a great experience with pretty much everybody I've worked with.

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.

I have my team. Like if you see everyone around me - I have my hair and makeup girl my assistant. They're very calm they're all about positive energy. There're no drama queens. Everyone wants everyone else to have a positive experience. There are no agendas. I think it creates a healthy environment and there are no boundaries to cross.

In almost everything experience is more valuable than precept.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano ' too I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film even if it's contemporary creates its own world.

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.

We certainly want those at the top to do well but if you base your entire presidency and your entire economic platform on helping them do even better you're missing what makes the economy tick. Because not everyone has been as fortunate as Mitt Romney you cannot base your whole approach on a life experience as rarified as his.

You can learn more from the lows than the highs. The highs are great but the lows make you really look at things in a different way and want to improve. Every player will have both in their careers and I have but what you get is that experience which is so important to perform at your best.

It was a very profound experience getting in touch with that part of us in all of us human beings that is committed beyond yourself to the point of giving everything you have including your life for other people for your fellow man.

I would love to be a father. I had a great father who taught me how gratifying that is. I'm not going to deny myself that. I think I'd be good at it. Everybody wants that experience. I definitely do.

My kids will grow up in a house knowing that it's perfectly normal for two men to be in love it's perfectly normal for two women to be in love. My kids will grow up knowing it's all about love. It doesn't matter who you're with and everyone should have that experience.

Like every aspect of cancer I've weathered thus far today's experience was not at all demoralizing expensive or humiliating. No it was just plain fun.

To me the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday and otherwise wouldn't have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.

No matter what his position or experience in life there is in everyone more latent than developed ability far more unused than used power.

Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No I don't think it'll happen - and that's fine. It's kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous.

I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let's bring joy back to the experience.