“My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.”

Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that.

Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, ‘Oh man, this is the stuff.’ It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.

The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It’s more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.

I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that’s okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can’t ever rest on your laurels.

Whether you are doing it in the bar, the church, the strip joint, or the Himalayas, the first duty of music is to complement and enhance life.

No one’s better than me. I’m not better than anyone. Whether it’s Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.

The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.

People are flowers. Music is water. Musicians are the hose.

The concept is to weave in some emotion.

Surrender your whole being to a note, and gravity disappears with one chord.

If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm.

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.

The worst thing you can become in life is cynical. Cynical is like concrete. and nothing grows in concrete.

You meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you’ve been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: ‘Write this down’

The sky was crying so I wiped away her tears, just like all the times she did the same me.

I part my lips, but no words come out. I want to cry. Want to beg. Want to scream. But mostly, I want to hold him until I know he’s going to be okay. Then I want him to hold me until I’m okay, too.

It’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.

Everything we do is either an act of love or a cry for help.

To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.

I laugh and I cry and I reason on until the late night, but I never feel the urge to call you. The person that I once knew is forever frozen in time.

Don’t mind me if I look at the ground today. My eyes are carrying the tears that kept the night awake.

A good cry can be wonderful sometimes, and sadness is nothing more than love announced. Sadness and Unhappiness are not the same thing, and it is good to remember that. And there is this: sadness cleanses the heart.