I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me.
As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.
For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.
It's hard to conceive of someone who could work for at least a few hours each day for months and years on the same story without it being close enough to their life experience to fuel their commitment.
I know I have experience, having worked with the likes of legendary composers like Ilaiyaraaja. And, I've been long enough with my dear friend A. R. Rahman, and we've collaborated on several musical works. All this gives me confidence.
I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.
You want to know my real pleasure? Food. I love chocolate. I can't get enough chocolate. I can't help it. But my biggest pleasure of all is exercise. I really get off on exercise.
I'm very proud of my Nigerian heritage. I wasn't fortunate enough to be raised in a heavy Nigerian environment, because my parents were always working. My father was with D.C. Cabs and my mother worked in fast food and was a nurse.
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
I never had a strategy about my life. I didn't have enough information to have a strategy. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I had no family mentors.
I savour the adulation and love I have been getting from my fans and the blessings of elders in my family. Fourteen years have given me a lot and I can't thank God and the industry enough.
When the storms of life come, if they come to me personally, to my family or to the world, I want to be strong enough to stand and be a strength to somebody else, be shelter for somebody else.
Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.
It's enough now of being unhealthy. I have a family, and I owe it to them to be as healthy as I can. A great sense of clarity comes when you have a child. It shows the important stuff to be important.
As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic.
I've never been invited to do 'Stars on Ice' before, which is the only figure skating tour in the U.S., and it's disappointing that I can't perform for my American fans... all because I'm not 'family friendly' enough.
I stuck around in Hollywood for too long. I was there a long time, and when I left, I was smart enough to realise that what I was leaving was not just the movie business. I wanted to get rid of the whole atmosphere.
There's a saying in my business that there are two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired and those who haven't been fired yet. That's kind of like prostate cancer. Every man will have it if he lives long enough.
If you don't tour, you cannot expect to sell a huge numbers of your albums either. It was both a business - and an economical decision and we wanted to play anyway. We just wanted to get out for the tour when it was safe enough for us.
