Curtis Mayfield

When I was just coming up, I always wanted to be able to perform to a large crowd with a symphony.

Coming up in Chicago, we heard a lot of blues.

Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women's rights, I wrote about what was important to me.

I didn't put Priest down. He was just trying to get out. His deeds weren't noble ones, but he was making money, and he had intelligence. And he did survive. I mean, all this was reality.

This accident, or incident, happened in the most secure place I could have felt I was in: Walking onstage with my guitar, you know?

As a kid, sometimes you have nobody to turn to. I could always go back to some of the sermons and talk to myself in a righteous manner and put that in a song.

With all respect, I'm sure that we have enough preachers in the world. Through my way of writing, I was capable of being able to say these things and yet not make a person feel as though they're being preached at.

My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.

Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do.

I used to love to sit and listen to the old people talk about yesterday. There's a lot of good information there.

Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain.

With a spinal cord injury, which most people don't really know about... there are many, many complications that actually lead you through your life, and sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.