Give your love and never change. Be willing to die for the love you carry inside.
What I hope is if you turn on the news tonight, I want to find a way to stop all this corruption I see.
I never knew about racial segregation until Martin Luther King.
One thing I learned about that I always knew about myself - that I always been afraid of myself.
I'm trying to find a home that I can come home to, and there's no stress or pressure to be scared to be in your own house.
When I went to Gabriel Roth's studio, I showed him I was good with my hands and started working as a handyman in his studio. I asked him for a chance, and he gave me a song to sing with Sharon Jones.
I just have to open up when I'm on stage because that's what I did in my life. I want people to know what I've been through, and the love and the honesty that I have kept inside me. I just open my heart and let my heart go free.
I was 14, and I left on my own. Living in a subway train, and police used to come in with a nightstick and say, 'You can't sleep here.' I'd get up and go across the street, get on another train, and go back the other way.
I was born in America. I was raised in America. And America truly has done me a lot of dirt, a lot of horrible things that I never will forget, but I know this is where I was born at.
With James Brown, I just learn the lyrics and then get out there and get funky with it and let my spirit free. But doing Charles Bradley, it's a lot of true, intimate words coming out of me that show me the picture inside myself.
With all the hurts they've been through, they find a loving way and a way to put their mind on something greater. That's what makes a good artist, a good singer: because you can hear the hurt in their voice, and you can hear the love in their voice.
A real good artist learns to be a better person through all the changes they've been through. They keep their loving and honesty growing and learn to look at the world and not be full of hatred.
Peforming as James Brown, I didn't really have to go deep in my soul the way I do as Charles Bradley.
I always try to get in the back of the audience because people really want to get close to me, and I want to get close to them.
I always loved James Brown, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke.
When I got out of Job Corps, I was an empty shell. I didn't know what to do with myself.
I have a routine to work on my vocals. I always get some honey and some extra virgin olive oil to coat my throat, and I go to bed.
If we start putting music out constantly where people don't think no more, people go crazy. We're gonna lose the love of heart, of soul. And if the world lose that, I think the world is doomed.
We've got to learn how to not look at creed or color. Look at how beautiful a bouquet of roses looks like - different color roses, all look beautiful. We have to learn how to let our beauty of the color of our roses shine to the world.
I've never been married. I'm married to my music.
