“Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!”

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

Nobody loves me but my mother, And she could be jivin’ too.

It just seemed to me that the way I played was nice. I could hear it myself.

I’ve put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

I don’t like anybody to be angry with me. I’d rather have friends.

A day that I don’t learn something new is a wasted day.

I never use that word, retire.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Elvis, he was unique. And he loved the blues, it was a pity he didn’t do more.

May I live forever. But may you live forever and a day.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you’re going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.

Being cool is being your own self, not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.

Whenever you say ‘yes’ to anything, there is less of you for something else. Make sure your ‘yes’ is worth the less.

When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means we have everything to gain.

People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.

The Biblical world-view is the only one that accepts the reality of evil and suffering while giving both the cause and the purpose, while offering God-given strength and sustenance in the midst of it.

Healing is the process of accepting all, then choosing best.

The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.