“Music became a healer for me.”

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’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more.

They found our hero in the gutter with a diamond ring and a gun.

And if I don’t be there by morning, she’ll know that I must’ve spent the night in jail.

All I am certain of right now is that I don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s not bad for someone who always used to run.

I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.

Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven?

I remember when I thought of singing as the bit that went between the guitar playing – something I couldn’t wait to get out of the way. Singing was originally like a chore that I didn’t really enjoy.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn’t fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn’t find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.

Loose ladies on the road will drive you crazy, every no, becomes a maybe.

I’d love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?

When I look for what I’m going to listen to I go backwards. I’m always going the other way you see. Most people are trying to figure out ‘how do I get in the fast lane going that way?’. I’m going in the other direction. I wanna find the oldest thing to do.

But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not.

I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department.

Crawling in my skin these wounds, they will not heal. Fear is how I fall confusing what is real.

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel In worlds whose course is equable and pure; No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,- The past unsighed for, and the future sure.

I was seeing the effects of what music can do — how it can be healing and bring people joy, but on the flip side, there was this ugliness. I saw the greed and the He-Mans that were willing to f*ck over children.

As artists, we have an opportunity to help the public evolve, raise consciousness and awareness, teach, heal, enlighten and inspire in ways the democratic process may not be able to touch. So we keep it moving.

People change and things go wrong, but just remember, life goes on.

I am no longer defined by what happened to me, but by who I am.

Never wish them pain. That’s not who you are. If they caused you pain, they must have pain inside. Wish them healing. That’s what they need.

Own your healing as you’ve owned your pain.