I never took singing lessons. I was like my daughter, singing in front of videos with a hairbrush as a microphone! Probably because I was imitating the songs I watched on TV. I thought it was great

You asked me whether you could learn to sing. I don't know. It could well be that you have the makings of a singer. It could well be that the world will give you the best that it has: glory, power, honor, what else is there? Palaces and parks, perhaps? Or merry meadows? And then what?

My parents heard me singing and they were surprised because they did not know I could sing.

I've learned never to say never. You just don't know. But I've reached an age when you start taking it easier. But I enjoy singing. I still sing – at home.

I'd always been quite quiet growing up, and singing was a way of having a voice.

I've learned things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn't really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.

It just happened. I like to sing, and well, I just started singing and folks just started listening. I can't tell folks that I worked and learned and studied, and overcame disappointments, because I didn't.

I've been singing for six years. I've been in and out of the studios with top producers, but it wasn't something I was ready to express to the public or to the press. I wasn't ready to come out. I wanted to perfect my voice and be 100 percent positive that I could come out right.

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.

When I was a boy and I sang, my voice felt to me like a leak sprung from a small and secret star hidden somewhere in my chest and whatever there was about me that was fragile disappeared when my mouth opened and I let the voice out. We learned, we were prisons for our voices. You could want to try and make sure the door was always opened... We weren't something struck to make a tone. We were strike and instrument both. If you can hold the air and shake it to make something, you learn, maybe you can make anything. Maybe you can walk out of here on this thin, thin air.

I've always had a voice, I just haven't had the courage to use it.

A lot of my aunties sang. Our singing voices come from my dear grandma, who was a powerful music hall singer. I was about six when I fell in love with singing, and eight when I won a singing competition for up to 16-year-olds. I just knew that singing was for me and some of my favourite singers are Elaine Paige, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Dickson and Whitney Houston.

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.