Brian McKnight

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.

It’s just exciting to be part of something that is brand-new.

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 don’t care how small the game. I want to win.

I’m the fifth generation of Seventh Day Adventists and the youngest of four brothers. When I was still very small, we formed a gospel quartet.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

I knew from that first moment we met. It was not love at first sight exactly, but – familiarity. Like oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you. Game over.

I’m standing in the ashes of who I used to be.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

You demonstrate love by giving it unconditionally to yourself. And as you do, you attract others into your life who are able to love you without conditions.

It’s amazing what passes for love these days – crows parading as blue jays.

When I told you I wasn’t in love, I lied.

When you fall in love, you wanna share it with people but you know there are some things that you need to keep to yourself, ’cause privacy makes things last longer, I feel.

We may tell ourselves that love is not really available. But the deeper truth is that we don’t entirely trust it, and therefore have a hard time fully opening to it or letting it all the way into us. This disconnects us from our own heart, exacerbating our sense of love’s scarcity.

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

I know you’re dying to meet me, but I can just tell you this. Baby, as soon as you meet me, you’ll wish that you never did.

I’m fine with the ups and downs in our story as long as the theme is love.

If you wanna break these walls down, you’re gonna get bruised.

I’m a wanderess, I’m a one night stand. Don’t belong to no city, don’t belong to no man.

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill, what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.

It doesn’t matter if you have a valentine or not – just love yourself and be your own.