With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds.

Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed.

Life is like a trumpet - if you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out of it.

Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.

My big ears indicated a talent for music. This thrilled me.

If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.

I knew the whistle of each of the river boats on the Tennessee.

You can never tell what's in a woman's mind, And if she's from Harlem, there's no use o' tryin

Saving was slow and painful.

Nature was my kindergarten.

You'll never miss the water 'til the well runs dry.

Suffering is when we resist the moment.

I am not man so much as syndrome

The punishment for rape should be castration.

I could have been more famous if I did all the glitzy things, but celebrity always seemed so unnecessary.

John McCain will pay hundreds of dollars for his own shoes. But we're the ones who have to pay for his flip-flops.

An ethical act is one which does not harm others' experience or expectation of happiness.

I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it.

Physicians of the utmost fame, Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no Cure for this Disease.'

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

My background is in improv and writing.