Ray Charles Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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
Women anchor me. They're there when I need them. They're sensitive to me, and I'm sensitive to them. I'm not saying I've loved that many women.

Ray Charles
I got a woman, way over town
That's good to me.
She gives me money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a kind of friend indeed.

Ray Charles
My friends don't come around me
Because I've been so blind,
I can't even borrow a nickel
Now I've almost lost my mind.

Ray Charles
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
Sometimes my dreams are so deep that I dream that I'm dreaming.

Ray Charles
On music:
It was a necessity for me—like food or water.

Ray Charles
I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing.

Ray Charles
Music is nothing separate from me. It is me. I can't retire from music any more than I can retire from my liver. You'd have to remove the music from me surgically — like you were taking out my appendix.

Ray Charles
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
I release feelings inside me through my songs. I take some of the sadness, some of the heartache, and turn it out. I'm able to stave off the severity. By expressing myself in music, I can soften the blow. But those melodies and rhythms can only do so much.

Ray Charles
I started to sing like myself — as opposed to imitating Nat Cole, which I had done for a while — when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchy, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it. It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it.

Ray Charles
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.
That's how my band made it. We swam through a lot of shit together, we swallowed a lot of pride, but we managed to do what we needed to do.

Ray Charles
I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of, since none of my relatives could sing or play an instrument. 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
But now if I can wrap myself up in that song, and when that song gets to be a part of me, and affects me emotionally, then the emotions that I go through, chances are I'll be able to communicate to you. Make the people out there become a part of the life of this song that you're singing about. That's soul when you can do that.

Ray Charles
Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.

Ray Charles
My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

Ray Charles
Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you — a part that's so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you. … It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, do we? But it's a force that can light a room. Soul is like electricity, like a spirit, a drive, a power.

Ray Charles
An aspirin can cure a headache for an hour or two, but if the pain's really deep, nothing short of brain surgery is going to make it go away.

Ray Charles
The fact of the matter is, you don't give up what's natural. Anything I've fantasized about, I've done.

Ray Charles
Yeah yeah, what'd I say, all right
Well, tell me what'd I say, yeah
Tell me what'd I say right now
Tell me what'd I say

Ray Charles
Then there were motorcycles. I learned to ride one in Tallahassee when I was about 14 or 15. … I got to know the town pretty well, and soon I felt confident about riding round. Tallahassee was full of hills, and I loved racing up and down 'em, sometimes trailing my friend or riding next to him, so I could hear the sound of the exhaust and make sure to follow closely and yet not too closely.
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
Music has 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
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
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
Hey mama, don't you treat me wrong,
Come and love your daddy all night long.
All right now, hey hey, all right.
See the girl with the diamond ring;
She knows how to shake that thing.
All right now now now, hey hey, hey hey.
Tell your mama, tell your pa,
I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas.
Oh yes, ma'm, you don't do right, don't do right.

Ray Charles
I got a woman way over town,
That's good to me, Oh yeah!

Ray Charles
You better live every day like your last because one day you're going to be right.

Ray Charles
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
I know that men ain't supposed to cry, but I think that's wrong. Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human.

Ray Charles