I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.

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

Nothing is impossible, you simply just have to believe it.

At least when one speaks of oneself one is passionate, well-informed and specific.

Even brave men, and D'Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it's totally wrong.

I wish not merely to be called Christian, but also to be Christian.

It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.

...180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous.

It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin, That lays eggs under your skin.

I think by the time I finished college I was calling myself a professional because I was, you know. I was making a living playing music.

Unfortunately, in our society, power means the ability to dominate and oppress.