Quotes from Aaron Neville

I didn't just get to 75 years by tiptoeing. I had to work hard sometimes.

When I record something, I'll take a drive and just listen.

I think things happened the way they did for a reason.

I know that God is good, and he saved me from hell and damnation.

Without faith, I don't think I'd be here.

I worked with the Neville Brothers for 40-some years on the highway, and up and down since I can remember - funk from New Orleans.

It's a thanksgiving to God. It's something I have wanted to do for a long time, but the record company wasn't ready for it. So I did it myself.

When you were a kid, a day was a long time and a year was a long time

Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.

Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

You never know how much time you got.

If we were poor, we didn't know it 'cause I guess you don't miss what you never had. So, you know, we made do with whatever. We used to make our own toys, and we used to play with spinning tops and marbles. A pocket full of marbles, and you were rich - you didn't worry about no money.

If you had told me I'd be making 62 tomorrow, I'd say you were lying.

I write poetry on my iPhone. I've got about 100 poems on there.

When I'm singing, it's a mixture of my innocence in the projects, my mom and dad. It's all the good and the bad, the laughs and the frowns that I went through and seen other people go through. Then you be trying to write it. Whatever's coming out, you try and make it all cool.

When I was growing in the Callope project, we had an oval parkway. Pavement ran around this whole thing. We'd skate or ride bicycles. There were benches and trees out there. It was paradise to us. They finished building it the same year I was born.

So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years.

I buried Joel on our 48th anniversary. I had been with her since I was 16.

The first time I recorded without Allen Toussaint, I wanted to do doo-wop. Everything I've done since then has got some kind of doo-wop essence in it.

I sing around the house, in the shower.

I balance with prayer and music. I sing every day.

But I knew if I ran I'd never be able to sing, so I had to take my punishment.

I just sing. You have to use it.

Beyonce is cool, and she can really sing.