Quotes by Michael Bolton

• It's an important thing to remember where you came from.
• Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time.
• Dr. King is so inspiring, so impressive, so moving as a human being.
• For years I've kept a list of dream projects.
• I have friends who've tried to break into the UK, who went back with their tails between their legs. Fortunately I've had the opposite experience.
• I have to be happy in the here and now because every time you start focusing on your legacy you're really setting yourself up for disappointment.
• I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.
• I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.
• I was blown away by the control and the range that I was hearing. I'm listening to Pavarotti and thinking, What the hell have I been doing with my voice all these years?
• A lot of the greatest compositions were made famous by Sinatra.
• The whole industry evolves around a great song.
• You're presuming too much by using the word legacy - presuming that someone is going to care.
• You can't make everybody love what you do, but you can know how great you feel doing it.
• With the internet, things are so much more immediate. People taste-test things to see if they want to buy the CD.
• Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.
• When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.
• When I was invited to sing with Pavarotti, I had about two weeks to learn Italian.
• When I started studying for the arias it was like going into training for a heavyweight title fight.
• We used to call it recurrent airplay when someone had a hit.
• I'm proud of my mentors. Ray Charles is the strongest influence on me as a singer.
• There are certain people who have become better artists, but they're brilliant at marketing. I think someone who's been phenomenal like that is Madonna.
• It's a combination of melody and lyrics, not one without the other. It's a confluence of these different elements that makes something powerful.
• The Top 40 is geared toward 20 and under, not 20 and up. That's the audience I'm geared to.
• The bigger you are, the harder they come down on you.
• Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.
• Sinatra, here's a guy who plays a tough guy in all his movies, but was allowed to be vulnerable when he stepped up to the microphone.
• One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist.
• No matter how great we get with digital formats of instrumentation, nothing really quite duplicates the real thing.
• It's understanding the intention of a composer that allows a producer and an arranger to make those moments speak.
• A lot of my success comes from black music. It's something I'm very proud of.
• To sing along with Stevie Wonder, you had to make your voice do things it was not accustomed to doing.
• Black music has increased my enjoyment of what I do. It has increased my range, my ability to reach into myself and accept myself.