I make jokes because humor is the greatest healing factor that there is.

You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.

Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.

I used to be a mean maniac. Someone once threw a firecracker at a show and I jumped off the side of the stage and whacked 'em on the side of the head.

The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.

My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.

My philosophy is the thicker the wood the thicker the sound, the bigger the string the bigger the sound. My smallest string is a 14 gauge.

I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.

Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights, ” she said, shimmying along the edge.“Not heights, ” he murmured. “Just falling.

A problem is nothing more than a solution outstanding.

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.

Many a man wins glory for prudence by seeking advice, then seeking advice as to what advice would be best to take, and finally following appetite.

I get bored doing one thing only. I've been very lucky to explore a lot of different artistic territory and I don't see why I won't continue on that path.

There is a difference between a person who is dying and a person who is suicidal. I do not want to die. I am dying.

if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity.

Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.

Yet [Georgia O'Keeffe ] always stayed true to her vision, and was at times uncompromising in following the path she saw for herself.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.