“I’m not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don’t play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I’ve always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood.”

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.

This moment in time, on this tour, you know, I’m discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it’s a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you.

All along this path I tread, my heart betrays my weary head, with nothing but my love to save, from the cradle to the grave.

Yeah, it is, because it’s a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That’s what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.

I can’t play long solos anymore without boring myself.

You were at school and you were pimply and no one wanted to know you. You get into a group and you’ve got thousands of chicks there.

The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note.

Give me a guitar and I’ll play; give me a stage and I’ll perform; give me an auditorium and I’ll fill it.

Music became a healer for me. And I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all fear and confusion.

Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.

I feel wonderful because I see the love light in your eyes, and the wonder of it all is you just don’t realize how much I love you.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

My Father’s Eyes’ is very personal. I realized that the closest I ever came to looking in my father’s eyes was when I looked into my son’s eyes.

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn’t really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.

An obsession is where something will not leave your mind.

Giving up something now for something better later is not a sacrifice. It is an investment.

If you want to be in the game you better shoot 75% from the line.

It’s better to make a difference than to make a point.

We were all born carrying a promise — a promise to make the world better — and there’s a yearning to make good on that promise that none of us can suppress forever.

Are you better off than you were one year ago, one month ago, or one week ago? If not, things will not improve by themselves.

If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones. After all, there are better ways to starve to death.

I’ve got this amazing relationship with God that is better than life, itself, so marvelous, so wonderful that everything else can fall apart and I’m okay.

It is better for me to die in behalf of Jesus Christ, than to reign over all the ends of the earth.