People are really surprised by the fact that I keep in touch with the latest trends rather than retreating to the distant past.

I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

When I was 15, I became an avid fan of Andres Segovia. He brought so much respectability to the guitar.

From 1969 to 1973, I was never played on radio stations.

I don't think kneeling during the anthem is such a bad thing.

No one can pigeon-hole me because I play everything, and I did that on purpose.

When my career took off it surprised me, I was only 22. To have that much success so fast, I just wasn't prepared.

When you've had a chance to live some experiences then you can really write, and not having lived that much when I was young I didn't have much to write about. Now having seen life, the songs seem to come easier.

If I've influenced people, so be it, but I don't dwell on those kinds of things. I just put out my music. If I influence someone without knowing it, I'm happy about it. I try not to think about those things because it's not about me.

I like Maroon 5, Swedish House Mafia and others.

When I did the national anthem, I did a soulful, kind of gospel-y version, but it was controversial with the war veterans, just the people who wanted to hear it the old, clinical, atmospheric way, and I didn't want to sing it like that.

I was the first artist to put the national anthem on the charts, and I'm thrilled.

I didn't have romances when I was in school. Girls didn't want to go out with me because I was blind.

I became a teen idol. At the time, it embarrassed me.

I always wanted to be the first true Latino to break the American barrier, to be on the American charts.

RCA wanted me to change my name. They asked me around 1965, when they first signed me. They said, 'Feliciano is too Latin.' I said, 'That's who I am. I'm Jose Feliciano.' They wanted me to change my name to Joe Phillips.

I thought I'd be spending my life making brooms, mops, chairs and things. That's fine for some blind people, but I wanted something more out of life. Music seemed the best way.

Actually, being blind is not so bad. If you're born this way, you never know anything else and you don't wonder about it. Though I'd hate to have lost my sight after being able to see.

Music made me feel like I was sexy. Music made me feel like I wasn't just a blind guy.

Feliz Navidad' has interfaced the English and Spanish cultures to come together and after all, we're living in a multi-cultural world.

I never knew Mother Teresa, but I admired her, especially in this day and age when there aren't many heroes.

I made history and nothing can besmirch that. Nothing can erase that.

I was drawn to the guitar, and still am, because it struck me as the most soulful instrument.

You can't write much quality, original music on a concertina.

I truly enjoyed the '60s.

I'm a one-man band!

I got tired of seeing people rush through the national anthem so they could have their popcorn and get to the game. Nobody ever sang the anthem with soul. It was always done clinically and they always stuck to the original. I put feeling into it. I sang it in a soulful manner.

When people don't hear you on the radio they think 'maybe he retired.'

I don't know if it's a legacy, but I love it. In my mind and other people's minds, they know I was the first to stylize the national anthem.

I liked the Doors and that kind of music.

I write with my brain. I don't need a computer.

I'm a musician first and sight has never had anything to do with it.

I never knew whether I'd make it as a star but I always wanted to.

My dream was to be a celebrity, to be on TV like Bob Hope was.

I didnt go to the high school prom. Couldn't get a date.

God gave me a good voice. I have perfect pitch. I don't sing flat.

I contend that if it wasn't for Jimi, the gadgets we use for electric guitars now wouldn't have happened. He was an inventor, in a sense - as well as being great artist.

I didn't write Feliz Navidad to make a lot of money for me.

I was a teen idol in Latin America.

I've been playing in Israel since 1971.

The only thing I can say to the people of Israel is that I love them and I am a strong ally.

I never expected to have such a long career, it's been 52 years.

Everyone is my equal, and that is transferred to my music.

I have very heightened senses - not just my hearing but my sense of smell.

I think sighted people let their eyes cheat them out of certain things. People who can see don't have a great sense of smell because they don't use it.

I think I am different from most blind people because my agility is not that of a blind person - I don't shuffle my feet when I walk. In fact, I have no, as I call them, 'blindisms.'

I got so big in the Latin market, it was a bit like being Elvis Presley. The limousines, the screaming girls - stuff I wasn't used to.

Music. It has always showed me that I could do what the other kids couldn't do. So I will keep playing and singing and entertaining, as long as the good Lord lets me. That is my life.

When I was a kid, I could make music out of anything, whether it be a rubber band, a tin can. Whatever it was I made music out of it and so that was my knack.

There were screaming girls, I had to learn as a blind person how to run to a limousine otherwise they'd take my clothes off and stuff. I thought to myself 'how could this happen?' I mean I could see it, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, but Jose Feliciano? It was a mystery to me.