“Playing guitar is like telling the truth.”

I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Elvis, he was unique. And he loved the blues, it was a pity he didn’t do more.

May I live forever. But may you live forever and a day.

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.

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.

I’m not a guitarist as far as a technician goes, I just pick it up and play it. Technique doesn’t come into it.

Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That’s a personal point of view but that’s the way I see it. I think that’s what it’s all about. The drive, the fire, the passion – it all comes out on the guitar.

Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn’t a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that’ll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.

Sometimes, I must admit, I’d like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn’t look right. I’d like to play for another 20 years, but I don’t know. I just can’t see it happening. I don’t know why. It’s a certain foreboding. A funny feeling. Vultures.

All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar.

The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.