“You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.”

I am a mere breath of air; a formless thought that thinks of you.

I do not think, therefore I am a moustache.

The worst part about being lied to is knowing you weren’t worth the truth.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

I am myself and I am here.

Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Life has no meaning a priori, It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast – or else there is nothing at all.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it’s a pretty honorable position to be in.

The music had to be rooted, and yet had to branch out, like the wild imagination of a child.

The term “genius” gets used far too loosely in rock & roll.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.