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.

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.

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

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

Pondering over your actions is a practical way of helping yourself in the battle against sin.

Some were drawn towards displays of physical showboating, when it came to cats, while others preferred subtle intellectual stimulation.

Everything passes everything wears out everything breaks.(Tout passe tout lasse tout casse.)

Time is a river without banks.

Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.

In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

My sight is bad, my hearing is bad, I feel bad, but I don't suffer, I don't complain.

Most people don't realize that the mind constantly chatters. And yet, that chatter winds up being the force that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do, what we react to, and how we feel.

All this I bear, for, what I seek, I know: Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

If you don't have a sense of humor, you'll hurt yourself arguing with me.