I began to discover that, in addition to her stunning achievements, there were flaws as there would be in any person's life. I wanted to tell Madam's story in an honest, frank way.

If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'

I had experiences or exposure to music in church. I went to a church, it was very unique. It was a predominantly African American Catholic church. So they would have - one mass would be traditional church music, and then the other mass would be gospel music.

I tried hard not to think about the scope or scale of making a record that would be heard by millions and millions of people. I did a pretty good job of tuning that out.

When you go to college the first couple years, and you kind of get beat around, you kind of think about, 'Maybe if I went to pro ball, it would be a little bit better.' Now that I look back on it, I made the right choice.