“The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.”

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.

Sometimes the proprietors of the little juke joints gave me a couple dollars. I loved that. I’d go back next Saturday.

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

Education is the one thing that no one can take from you.

I do it because I still get a kick out of it. I still love performing. It keeps me young.

A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me.

We are here because there are things that need our help. Like the planet. Like each other. Like animals. The world is like a garden, and we are its protectors.

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!

I’d rather be B.B. King. That’s the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other … I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.

Religion began as a natural explanation of the universe. The problem started when people refused to accept new evidence.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.

A lot of people believe what other people say.

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

Brokenness is a beginning.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it

In dreams begins responsibility.