“It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, ‘Don’t play like me, play like you.’”

I mean, it didn’t matter to me that there were people, it didn’t matter that I was shy Just the sound was so captivating that it helped me to get rid of those inhibitions.

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.

Our love will rule in this kingdom we have made.

I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.

I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I’m handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I’ve got to consider how it’s going to affect people. How it’s going to affect me, as well. Because it’s like a cycle.

When you’re onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it’s very artificial. You can’t really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

I know there will be no more tears in heaven.

There’s a desire in me to express something – to match what I hear in my head.

But the guitar, when you think about it, is the most versatile, really. I mean you can pick it up and take it with you wherever you go.

And I don’t like having my picture taken. I’m almost like an old African in that sense. I think it steals a bit of the soul.

I couldn’t believe how good Jimi Hendrix was It was a really difficult thing for me to deal with, but I just had to surrender and say, ‘This is fantastic.’

I thought, ‘My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid.’

I’ve always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters’ early records – only louder

Having lovers and friends is all good and fine But I don’t like yours and you don’t like mine.

I never set myself too high a goal. It was always tone and feeling, for me.

I’m starting to see players copy what I do. I’m flattered.

It was my great good fortune, while I was still a student at college, to have possessed a copy of an English translation of his great work.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don’t know what to copy.

At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of ‘Sports Illustrated.’ I’m on the cover with the blurb, ‘Can Lou Do It?’ I’d just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week’s coverage.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.

The art of medicine cannot be inherited, nor can it be copied from books

I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.