The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.

I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.

When I die, they'll bury the blues with me. But the blues will never die.

I don't do nothin’ I don't want to do.

I don't think about time. You're here when you're here. I think about today, staying in tune.

The one thing the blues don't get is the backing and pushing of TV and radio like a lot of this garbage you hears. They choke stuff down people's throat so they got no choice but to listen to it.

No matter what you got, the blues is there

It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .

I remember back in Detroit, I used to go to the Apex Bar every night after I got off work. The bartender there used to call me Boom Boom. I don't know why, but he did.

I hitchhiked, took trucks 'n' trains - anything that would pick me up. I stopped in Memphis for about six months and they found me and come got me. Stayed about a month an' split again.

Poor people have the blues because they're poor and hungry. Rich people can't sleep at night because they're trying to hold on to their money and everything they have.

You can critique her writing, but not her lifestyle.

Talent is an art of gaining admiration!

Play with your ideals and laugh at the limitations of your mundane life.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

As I think about the future, I'm back where most people live their lives. Which is, death is not imminent, and that's different.

There are things roaming around inside my head as clever as Theseus in the Labyrinth. It's just that nobody ever gave them the necessary piece of string, so they'll never find their way out.

The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build.

I think I know a lot about campaigns.

Reaching that windswept perch, I decided, would cleanse my spirit and heal my wounds. More than that, it would send me home with a title: The First American Woman to Climb Everest.

I don't believe I'm bad, and I do believe I'm good.