I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.

If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.

A friend is a friend forever And a good one will never leave, never

I'm a bit of a magpie: whatever I see or hear or read feeds into the songs.

Oh! To not need cognitive justification for every single thing. Wouldn't that be a life?

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.

Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you.

Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.

It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.

No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.

Democracy could be worthless and counterproductive in the absence of sound moral leadership!

So what I had believed to be nothing to me was simply my entire life. How ignorant one is of oneself.

They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.

I had listened to Joe Turner. When they'd book Joe there, I'd play the blues behind him.

There are clear cases in which "understanding" literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.

God lives, but not as we. His creatures live but to die. But God is life. Therefore, goodness is not an attribute. Goodness is God.

People like to see human error when it’s honest. When people see you swing and miss, they start to root for you.

I think movies lost a lot when they went to stereo and five-track sound.

I love music of all kinds, but there's no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too.