Brian McKnight

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

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.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

I think I’ve tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It’s kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.

Never trust anyone who wants what you’ve got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

We live in an era of tremendous facts. And the facts are facts. They are also unpleasant facts, which does not decrease their factual percentage one bit. Our job is to understand them, to recognize their presence, to learn if we can what they signify and not to fall into the error of minimizing facts because they have a bitter flavor.

When you have the right script for your life, you will always be the star of the show.

All life is experience, and one level is exchanged for another only when its lesson is learned.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I think us bad b*tc*es is a gift from God.

If you ever get started on the right path to change, there is one important precondition you have to meet. You must rid yourself of that gnawing and overpowering sense of urgency and panic that always seems to appear on the scene.

The way out of life and death is not some special technique; essential thing is to penetrate to the root of life and death.

There is power in forgiveness.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.