Brian McKnight

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

I don’t really look at my career in terms of highlights and low lights. I think I’m at this place right now and to be at this place right now I’ve had to go through many obstacles and lots of highs and lows and for me it’s about the entire journey.

There’s only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: whether you want to love somebody and you want to be loved in return.

My fans are the best in the world! They’ve grown up with me and stayed with me through this entire journey.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

There’s two things you can’t live without. Water and music.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.