“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.”

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.

But I’m not here just to make records and money. I’m here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: “Do you know this feeling?

I personally believe that most people that play an instrument would be able to write a few songs here and there. But they say, “I tried, I can’t do it” and give up and don’t try it again; they get too discouraged.

Fame has killed more very talented guys than drugs. Jimi Hendrix didn’t die of an overdose, he died of fame.

[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards.

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it.

This is the rock ‘n’ roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.

Nobody wants to get old, but nobody wants to die young either.

I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.

It’s an addiction and addiction is something I should know something about.

You’ve got the sun, you’ve got the moon, and you’ve got the Rolling Stones.

If you say I’m great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?

Yes, I’ve been trepanned. That’s quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

Some people think I’m a mythical genius, others think I’m a junkie madman.

The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It’s almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history.

Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.

It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.

The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality – to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting – but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail.

When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

Reading across three languages is a way for me to diversify my intake as a reader, not to tunnel into certain categories or demographics.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

Don’t use the language of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when talking about blood sugar numbers