Off stage it's cool-out time. You can't funk and roll ALL the time.

I can't hang out as loose as I used to, but I can still go down Jefferson Avenue and look in the faces of winos, pimps and junkies, all the things I'm made of.

Funkers are people who dig the funk; Little funkers, Big funkers, Old funkers, Young funkers, Foxy funkers, Mother funkers, Papa funkers.

Whether you're rich or poor, life's still cold-blooded.

She's the kind you don't take home to mother.

My teacher said I would either be a hoodlum, or a great entertainer.

I just live one day at a time.

If anything I consider myself non-violent. I'm from the hippy era, peace, love, groovy.

I'm still James Johnson. Rick James is a stage name. James Johnson keeps Rick James on the ground... Kind of sort of.

You and I, we'll be together 'til the six is nine.

Punk Funk means to be one with yourself. To be rebellious, aggressive, able to do and say what you feel at all times, without inflicting mental or spiritual pain.

I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.

Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?

For me, writing clarifies things. It gives meaning, and it makes me see the connections.

I used to think that one of the great signs of security was the ability to just walk away.

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.

They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

Few of us can actually change the world. We can only change ourselves. But if enough people took that to heart, the world would change.

Everyone longs for expressiveness. That's why love carries so much weight. Because so many lives are without other means of expressiveness.

There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature.