“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”

Many people leave the country to see beautiful places. I just look out the window and see some of the most gorgeous scenery ever, right here in the USA.

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.

It’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness.

What makes the desert beautiful,’ said the little prince, ‘is that somewhere it hides a well.

The love and trust your kids have for you is something beautiful.

I think that personality traits that come through when somebody is really sincere is what makes them beautiful.

Yet through all this stress the forest is maintained in marvelous beauty.