“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.”

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.

Like a fool, I fell in love with you, Turned my whole world upside down.

Music became a healer for me.

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they’re far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they’re out of my league.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive

The only difference between Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders is that Gorbachev is alive.

I’m lucky. Usually you’re dead to get your own museum, but I’m still alive to see mine.

If my father was alive to hear that, he’d turn over in his grave.

Perhaps the earth can teach us As when everything seems dead And later proves to be alive.

I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.

To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, To travel well is better than to arrive.