“I’m a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that’s the way I feel about people who “play on sessions.”

The rock and roll spirit. I learned a lot of that because I worked with Buddy Holly. I played bass with him, and he taught me a lot about that.

I love Johnny Cash, and I respect Johnny Cash. He’s the biggest. He’s like an Elvis in this business, but no, he’s never been the rebel.

Mainly what I learned from Buddy… was an attitude. He loved music, and he taught me that it shouldn’t have any barriers to it.

I’ve always felt that blues, rock ‘n’ roll and country are just about a beat apart.

Cuz I was never pretty anyway and never cared anything about that.

It was all devastating. I’d never dealt with losing anyone close to me, and I didn’t know where to put it in my life.

His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective.

Heroes put to the test, keeping a promise, doing their best.

The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

So I’m not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.

The villains have turned into heroes. The heroes have turned into heals.

You know, I feel sorry for the young artists.

Got my Allman Brothers cassettes stacked up on the dash, got some Jack back in the trunk and a tank full of gas.

One night of love don’t make up for six nights alone. But I’d rather have one than none Lord, cause I’m flesh and bone.

Hitting the bottle again, ever than I’ve drunker been. Or is it drunker than I’ve ever been?

Now, I don’t know how they judge all that, but if anybody in the world deserves to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Ritchie Valens does.

It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be.

This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.

Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.

For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help sooth me.

I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.

I think the song itself, ‘Smoke and Fire,’ is just a metaphor for the feelings that you feel in a relationship.