“I never set myself too high a goal. It was always tone and feeling, for me.”

The toughest thing about being a celebrity, I suppose, is being polite when I don’t want to be.

Plant your love and let it grow.

If you hand me a guitar, I’ll play the blues. That’s the place I automatically go.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it’s a pretty honorable position to be in.

I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more.

They found our hero in the gutter with a diamond ring and a gun.

And if I don’t be there by morning, she’ll know that I must’ve spent the night in jail.

All I am certain of right now is that I don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s not bad for someone who always used to run.

I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.

Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven?

I remember when I thought of singing as the bit that went between the guitar playing – something I couldn’t wait to get out of the way. Singing was originally like a chore that I didn’t really enjoy.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn’t fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn’t find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.

Loose ladies on the road will drive you crazy, every no, becomes a maybe.

I’d love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?

If you could only know, how many feelings fit inside me; the noise that lives in this stormy sea.

I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.

If you want to be sad, no one in the world can make you happy. But if you make up your mind to be happy, no one and nothing on earth can take that happiness from you.

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

I’m knocked out, I’ve never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I’m quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy.

The thing is, I get asked when I first knew I wanted to act so often, and I genuinely can’t answer it. It’s just… I got the bug, and that’s it.

Comedy, such a lovely lady, she’ll pick you up, you your feeling blue.

I have angst in my life, but I’m like anybody. We all have angst in our lives that we pick up and fidget with and then we put down and look at some other things that make us feel good or enjoy our lives.