“I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.”

Let us burn one from end to end, and pass it over to me my friend.

Don’t be discouraged by writer’s block. Writer’s block just means you need to listen to other music.

Don’t let what you have to heal from blind you to how much there is to heal for.

I can change the world With my own two hands Make a better place With my own two hands Make a kinder place.

The woman in you is the worry in me.

As long as the songs are strong, I think you can express yourself in any style and have it be soulful and have it be your own voice.

I refuse to age disgracefully in rock ‘n’ roll.

I’m not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum ‘n’ bass record.

Make sure the fortune that you seek is the fortune that you need.

It just takes a pebble to bring down a good man.

The advice I have for new artists is this – write great songs and play them live as often as possible. Get residencies all over town and crush it.

We figured you could download live shows for days, so we decided to go for a cream-of-the-crop approach, but not just take the best vocal or the best performances.

Every moral has a story, every story has and end. Every battle has its glory, and its consequence.

If you’re gonna live, then live it up.

You look like gold. I’ve been fooled before, but now I know I’ve made the mistake in the past. But now I, now I know the difference from gold and brass.

I love being on the road, I love playing.

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

If we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn’t that what silence is? It’s a listening, a deep wordless listening.

In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling? Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it.

There’s a great space in which this moment takes place. There’s a great silence that is listening to the thoughts.

A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.

I think that’s a good thing when the one who is listening, is feeling it in a different way that the one who creates.