Aretha Franklin

I’m the lady next door when I’m not on stage.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.

Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.

Falling out of love is like losing weight. It’s a lot easier putting it on than taking it off.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

‘Swing’ is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a ‘swing band’ in music.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

The main thing is you want to emote.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

Music is a verb.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

Look for the one who’s not smiling and play to that person. Once you’ve got that person, you’ve got the whole club.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.