“The whole deal is when you walk onstage, you’re up there bigger than life. People idolize you.”

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other – our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That’s to help each other, not hurt each other.

Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. It’s the way you pick, and the way you hold the guitar, more than it is the amp or the guitar you use.

I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn’t death.

Music really is a way to reach out and hold on to each other in a healthy way.

I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process and that’s neat, too, because if you stop growing, what good is it musically? So that is what I am looking forward to – growing. In some ways, I felt stagnant in my life and it showed.

Even though there’s reasons to try things that may or may not work, it’s still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.

I actually wanted to be a drummer, but I didn’t have any drums.

You know, right now, the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all, I thank God I’m alive today, and I mean that. You see, I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

That’s how it happens, livin life by the drop.

It is the human things that make life good, the unexpected kindness, the friendly note, the bracing word, the neighbour’s extra loaf of bread she leaves at our back door.

The problem with taking amps to a shop is that they come back sounding like another amp.

What I am trying to get across to you; is please take of yourselves and those that you love; because that is what we are hear for, that’s all we got, and that is all we can take with us. Are you with me?

Looking back in front of me, in the mirror a grin. Through eyes of love I see, I’m only looking at a friend.

I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That’s technical talk.

All the Strats have personalities of their own and feel completely different.

The way people come into your life when you need them, it’s wonderful and it happens in so many ways. It’s like having an angel. Somebody comes along and helps you get right.

Welcome those big, sticky, complicated problems. In them are your most powerful opportunities.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.

The kingdom of God is a crash-bang opera: the king is dramatic, demanding, and unavoidable.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.