Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

The two things you can't fake are good food and good music

All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.

I want a Sunday kind of love A love to last past Saturday night And I’d like to know it’s more than love at first sight

A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

I think for the last fifteen, twenty years or so, Hollywood has underestimated the appeal of the Western. I think there is still a huge market.

Our ultimate destination is mental peace.

It seems with progress you gain certain things and you lose certain things. The automobile replaced the horse and buggy but you lost all of that nice manure.

I've never been uncomfortable putting my heart on display, my feelings on display, certainly with an audience.

Cooperation in the most natural thing in the world

I am a lucky player; a powerful winning force surrounds me.

Liberty, Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order.

It's just a crime that people don't take the time and make the effort to have a conversation if it's bothering them that much.

If a man has any brains at all, let him hold on to his calling, and, in the grand sweep of things, his turn will come at last.