Brian McKnight

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.

I think they can co-exist. You don’t have to put one down for another. I’ve been bitten by the acting bug, and where it takes me, it won’t take away from the music.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

I think I’d have to say my favorite IWC. They have been around for so long and the craftsmanship is top notch. A watch maker that has been in business over 100 years has to know what they are doing.

I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

I was brought up to be a gentleman. That means you know how to walk, talk and dress the part.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

You usually can’t tell what’s inspiring until you look back on it.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.