“I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.”

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?

When I look for what I’m going to listen to I go backwards. I’m always going the other way you see. Most people are trying to figure out ‘how do I get in the fast lane going that way?’. I’m going in the other direction. I wanna find the oldest thing to do.

Age is nothing but experience, and some of us are more experienced than others

When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.

At 25, you’ve got millions of brain cells to kill.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can’t deal with a woman of their own age.

Everybody, no matter how old you are, is around 24, 25 in their heart.

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.

Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.

So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.