“I read, I painted, I didn’t hate niggers.”

You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things.

I don’t know what happened. I just exploded. I’d never sung like that before. I used to stand still and sing simple, but you can’t sing like that in front of a rock band.

I would trade all my tomorrow’s for one single yesterday.

I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

Don’t go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.

That’s what I’m trying to do mostly in the whole world, is not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else.

At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I’m gonna show ’em how to do it.

You got to get it while you can.

They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that’s what I sounded like.

I’m tired of all these hippie jack-offs

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.

All any girl really wants is just love and a man. But what man can put up with a rock-n-roll star?

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.

At least we know we tend to be afraid. If you object to my plural noun, I’ll retract it.

When everything is together – the band, me, the audience, it’s boss! It’s just like magic.

If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be.

The new ‘niggers’ are gays. It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.