I had always intended to make a living out of playing blues. But I never admitted it to myself. I don't suppose I could have given a logical reason for it ever becoming possible to do so.

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

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.

May the crushed spirit revived.

Failure makes the success worth it.

Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.

When I'm on stage, I get real happy there. Maybe that's the only time in my adult life I feel like myself.

It isnot good enough tospend time and ink indescribing the penultimate sensations and physical movements of people getting into a state of rut, we all know them so well.

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.

Let's put Christ back into Christmas.

Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord with the law.

I'm an introvert at heart... And show business - even though I've loved it so much - has always been hard for me.