I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.

I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.

In those days, between the ages of 12 and 18 you meant nothing. You were the extra place at the side table if someone came to dinner. You were of no interest to anyone.

I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can't play is the dominant one.

The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.

I'm a compulsive musician, but it's also a bloody good way out of having to do anything else.

Once you became associated with a children's show, you're finished.

I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.

We are never short of craziness

Well, I'm not a method actress by any stretch of the imagination so the best thing that I can do is be as real as possible and find whatever commonality in that character that I can see myself.

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

We drown our doubts in dry champagne and soothe our souls with fine cocaine. I don't know why I even care, we get so high and get nowhere.

Success is not forever, and failure is never final.

The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

I don't know about you, but rattlesnake sounds pretty damn good right now.

Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

We ran like a herd of wild cattle.

Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it.