“Retire? I can’t spell the word. I’d play in a wheelchair.”

And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You’ve got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

I don’t regret nothing.

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It’s the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: ‘He passed it on.’

I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was.

No broken hearts, no broken necks.

The rock’s easy, but the roll is another thing.

To me, the main thing about living on this planet is to know who the hell you are and be real about it. That’s the reason I’m still alive.

I don’t trust doctors. It’s not to say there ain’t some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn’t trust ’em at all.

To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.

To me, my biggest fear is getting a big head, and that is when I get the hammer. Because it’s very easy in this game to believe you’re something special.

I’ve never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself.

I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn’t get bored anywhere.

I’m an unpure purist, something like that.

If you don’t know the blues there’s no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.

Great necessities call out great virtues.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.

People think retiring is fun. Well, maybe, but if you have a certain kind of fire inside, there is no end in sight.

Appearance should never attain reality, And if nature conquers, then must art retire.

It is everyone’s prerogative to retire. But it’s like giving up on life as far as I’m concerned.

I never use that word, retire.

Why retire from something if you’re loving it so much and enjoying it so much, and you’re blessed with another group of people to work with like the gang on ‘Hot in Cleveland?’ Why would I think of retiring? What would I do with myself?