“It’s that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it’s gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.”

Like, I don’t think I’d go off the road for long now, for life with a guy no matter how good. Yeah, it’s the truth. Scary thing to say though, isn’t it?

I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins.

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn’t start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not.

You better not compromise yourself, it’s all you’ve got.

The consequences, [screw] the implications of the actions, to hell with it all… whatever happens as a result is better than the nothingness that is inevitable with silence.

You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things.

I don’t know what happened. I just exploded. I’d never sung like that before. I used to stand still and sing simple, but you can’t sing like that in front of a rock band.

I would trade all my tomorrow’s for one single yesterday.

I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

Don’t go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.

That’s what I’m trying to do mostly in the whole world, is not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else.

At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I’m gonna show ’em how to do it.

You got to get it while you can.

They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that’s what I sounded like.

I’m tired of all these hippie jack-offs

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.

I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn’t have anything to prove.

If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.

That which we have lived is nothing; that which we live is a point; that which we have to live is not yet a point, but may be a point which, together, shall be and shall have been.

I can score 20 points if I want to, but that’s not my desire.

Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.

I hate birthdays, .. It’s more like a new starting point in New York. For me, it’s an evolution. I don’t celebrate the past. I like the present and tomorrow.

I always did a lot of singing and dancing, so I am glad it worked out that way. I would like to study stage acting at some point, though.

If you can’t be yourself, what’s the point of being anyone else?