Top 100 Quotes About Ray Charles
#1. What is a soul? It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.
Ray Charles
#2. There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.
Robert Wyatt
#3. To me, music is entertainment - what else can it be? In fact, it's the only language I know of that's universal.
Ray Charles
#4. Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I'll give you some of mine.
Ray Charles
#5. All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow.
Dave Barry
#6. I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.
Joe Cocker
#7. When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it.
Quincy Jones
#8. I did it to myself. It wasn't society ... it wasn't a pusher, it wasn't being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.
Ray Charles
#9. I recently saw the movie about Ray Charles, and there's a scene where he falls down and the mother doesn't help him. She says, I don't want anyone to treat you like a cripple. I've fallen down before, and Molly will say, get up and just go.
Teri Garr
#10. Some golfers fantasize about playing in a foursome with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Snead. The way I hit I'd rather play in a foursome with Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder.
Bruce Lansky
#11. Live each day like it's your last, 'cause one day you gonna be right
Ray Charles
#12. Music to me is just like breathing. I have to have it. It's part of me.
Ray Charles
#13. There's such a thing as too much happiness and sadness. What I'm after is contentment.
Ray Charles
#14. Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
Ray Charles
#16. When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in.
Ray Charles
#17. Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.
Ray Charles
#18. Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.
Ray Charles
#19. I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.
Billy Joel
#20. Ray Charles, who said to Stevie Wonder, Maybe we're white. Never got a dinner!
Red Buttons
#21. Nowadays they say you need a special chip to put in the TV so kids can't watch this and that. In my day, we didn't need a chip. My mom was the chip. End of story.
Ray Charles
#22. I don't sing a song unless I feel it. The song don't tug at my heart, I pass on it. I have to believe in what I'm doing.
Ray Charles
#23. A guy said to me, 'You're so lucky. You have people like Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand and The Beatles doing your songs.' I figured out, though, the harder I work the luckier I get. The secret of anything is to surround yourself with good people if you want a good product.
Buck Owens
#24. My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.
Ray Charles
#26. Now Listen You know I work so hard, all day long Everything I try to do, Seem to always turn out wrong That's why I wanna stop by on my way home and say Let's go get stoned
Ray Charles
#27. I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.
Boz Scaggs
#28. Sometimes my dreams are so deep that I dream that I'm dreaming.
Ray Charles
#29. Rhythm and blues used to be called race music ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.
Ray Charles
#30. There are many spokes on the wheel of life. First, we're here to explore new possibilities.
Ray Charles
#31. Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.
Percy Sledge
#32. I think that most great artists who are extremely known, as I am, would intimidate a lot of people. I don't want to do that to people, but I know I do.
Ray Charles
#33. One day, I'll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it's nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.
J. Cole
#34. My mom taught me a lot. A lot about minding your own business and leaving other people's business alone. And let them think what they want.
Ray Charles
#35. It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good.
Ray Charles
#36. Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.
Miles Davis
#37. Listen to any cantor, any good hazan, sing and you can hear a little bit of Ray Charles going on.
Jerry Leiber
#38. The average American's day planner has fewer holes in it than Ray Charles's dart board.
Dennis Miller
#39. When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.
Quincy Jones
#40. You hear, Eugene?' said Lightwood over his shoulder. 'You are deeply interested in lime.'
'Without lime,' returned that unmoved barrister at law, 'my existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.
Charles Dickens
#41. I know it sounds strange - a blind teenager buzzin' round on a motorcycle - but I liked that; that was me. I had always been nervy, and I always had a lot of faith in my ability not to break my neck.
Ray Charles
#42. Ray Charles has always been a big part of my life.
Darius Rucker
#44. All my life I've always been so blue, born to lose, and now I'm losing you.
Ray Charles
#45. I think Ray Charles did as much as anybody when he did his country music album. Ray Charles broke down borders and showed the similarities between country music and R&B.
Willie Nelson
#46. Any artist, when he goes in to record, should have the feeling that any song he records can be a hit. This may sound egotistical, but it makes sense.
Ray Charles
#47. I'm a firm believer in God himself, but that's as far as I can go. I'm not any denomination. I'm not Catholic or Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist or Jewish or Muslim. I'm none of those things. And I'm sure that's just fine with God.
Ray Charles
#48. Many times during auditions, I was told that I couldn't carry a note with a bucket, and that I sure couldn't play the piano.
Ray Charles
#49. My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I've grown up listening to all kinds of music.
Avicii
#50. Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.
Taylor Hackford
#51. I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.
Quincy Jones
#52. Give it up for Ray Charles and his beautiful legacy. And thank you, Ray Charles, for living.
Jamie Foxx
#53. Do it right or don't do it at all. That comes from my mom. If there's something I want to do, I'm one of those people that won't be satisfied until I get it done. If I'm trying to sing something and I can't get it, I'm going to keep at it until I get where I want it.
Ray Charles
#54. I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.
Quincy Jones
#55. I have met so many of my idols - like Ray Charles, Brian Setzer - all these cats that are legendary musicians. If they had said to me, 'Hey man, I'm busy,' it would have crushed my soul.
Drake Bell
#56. 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.
Ray Charles
#57. Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray, it's impossible to imagine anyone else in that role. I mean, he's just so great. Over the course of the five movies, he always just takes it so seriously, doesn't condescend to the material, whatsoever and just treats it as if he was playing Hamlet.
David Kirschner
#58. I have owned and played a Steinway all my life. It's the best Beethoven piano. The best Chopin piano. And the best Ray Charles piano. I like it, too.
Randy Newman
#59. Music is powerful. As people listen to it, they can be affected. They respond.
Ray Charles
#60. I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.
Ray Charles
#61. Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn't even slow them up!
Charles Adams
#62. When I was going blind, I didn't turn to God. It didn't seem to me then - and it doesn't seem to me now - that those items were His concern. Early on, I figured I better begin to learn how to count on myself, instead of counting on supernatural forces.
Ray Charles
#63. I don't think I've met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.
Clint Eastwood
#64. Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal.
Ray Charles
#65. Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a [very] good memory.
Ray Charles
#66. So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.
Ray Bradbury
#67. Don't go backwards - you've already been there.
Ray Charles
#68. Genius is of no country; her pure ray Spreads all abroad, as general as the day.
Charles Churchill
#69. I really feel that if you're gonna be good, you gotta practice ... Practice whatever the hell you do.
Ray Charles
#70. Music is the chalk to the blackboard of life. Without it everything is a blank slate
Ray Charles
#71. Stephen King consummately honors several traditions with his rare paperback original, 'Joyland.' He addresses the novel of carny life and sideshows, where the midway serves as microcosm, such as in those famous books by Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney and William Lindsay Gresham.
Paul Di Filippo
#72. I never wanted to be famous; I only wanted to be great.
Ray Charles
#73. You got to set your mind right and the rest will come to you naturally. No restrictions, no hang-ups, no stupid rules, no formalities, no forbidden fruit - just everyone getting and giving as much as he and she can.
Ray Charles
#74. Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.
Ray Charles
#75. The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again.
Eliza Doolittle
#76. I never said I was a genius. I never said I was a cornerstone. I've never said I'm a legend in my own time. You never heard me say nothing like that.
Ray Charles
#78. The sun,
the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man
burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.
Charles Dickens
#79. If you can play the blues, you can do anything.
Ray Charles
#80. I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose.
Ray Charles
#81. That feeling that I could touch the sky? That's exactly how you make me feel. (Ray)
Charles Sheehan-Miles
#82. You ask me what I'd like to do that I haven't done and I say 'Nothin'!' I haven't any mountains to climb or oceans to swim. I've been an extremely blessed individual ... I'm not clamorin' for more trinkets. If I were to die tomorrow, I could say I've had a good life.
Ray Charles
#83. Before I begin, let me say right here and now that I'm a country boy. And, man, I mean the real backwoods! That's at the start of the start of the thing, and that's at the heart of the thing.
Ray Charles
#84. Mama was a country woman with a whole lot of common sense. She understood what most of our neighbors didn't - that I shouldn't grow dependent on anyone except myself. 'One of these days, I ain't gonna be here,' she kept hammering inside my head.
Ray Charles
#85. I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and '60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that's where I got my first taste for music.
Avicii
#86. There are things we could do like let Brad Dourif play Charles Lee Ray's brother or father , something like that, but I think any of those options would've been squarely in the horror-comedy realm.
David Kirschner
#87. Just because you can't see anything , doesn't mean you should shut your eyes.
Ray Charles
#88. Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.
Taylor Hackford
#89. Someday you going to make some man very happy
I hope its going to be Ray ...
Your soldier? I nodded, a half smile in my face
You love him?
Yes ... Yes I do ...
Charles Sheehan-Miles
#90. Other arms reach out to me, Other eyes smile tenderly, Still in peaceful dreams I see, The road leads back to you.
Ray Charles
#91. The important thing is to feel your music, really feel it and believe it.
Ray Charles
#92. With singing, the name of the game is to make yourself believable. When somebody hears you sing a song, and they say, 'Oh, that must have happened to him,' that's when you know you're transmitting. It's like being a good actor. You make people feel things, emotions and what not.
Ray Charles
#93. I cant retire from music any more than I can retire from my liver. Youd have to remove the music from me surgically - like you were taking out my appendix.
Ray Charles
#94. I'd like to think that when I sing a song, I can let you know all about the heartbreak, struggle, lies and kicks in the ass I've gotten over the years for being black and everything else, without actually saying a word about it.
Ray Charles
#95. I always say that I went to the College of Blossoms and the University of Ray Charles.
Merry Clayton
#96. I have the background singers of Ray Charles, the background singers of Smokey Robinson, and the background singers of Barry White and I built a choir around that.
Della Reese
#97. As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.
Joe R. Lansdale
#98. The fact of the matter is, you don't give up what's natural. Anything I've fantasized about, I've done.
Ray Charles
#99. Art is the bridge across the gap between peoples and cultures. Writing is one of the arts that can help link people.
Charles Ray
#100. I can't help what I sound like. What I sound like is what i am. You know? I cannot be anything other that what I am.
Ray Charles
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