“They think they can make fuel from horse manure – now, I don’t know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it’s sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.”

God bless the child that’s got his own.

The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy … it’s sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it’s the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.

You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.

Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.

Souls do not have calendars or clocks, nor do they understand the notion of time or distance. They only know it feels right to know one other.

In a sea of strangers, you’ve longed to know me. Your life spent sailing to my shores.

Nobody can guarantee the real terms per pupil funding increase. In the Labour party’s manifesto we know the figures don’t add up.

Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.

Perhaps our own opposition to even the level of European integration we have now, let alone any more, is well known.

We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. About the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because, and I am not making this up, he had a pet cat.

I lived in countries that had no democracy. so I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.

I know there are some voices calling for a punitive deal that punishes Britain. That would be an act of calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe, and it would not be the act of a friend.