All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.

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

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.

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.

They were the kind of words you read back and every lettered limb surprises you because you never knew you really felt those things the whole time.

There is no time for holding back.

There were chunks of my life when I was married, and when I was married I never cheated. But I made up for it when I wasn't married. You have to keep your hand in.

If you ride in a group, then you're okay. Then the cars will respect you. But if you're riding alone, you get no respect out there from cars at all.

My patriotism and my conscience required me to support it and to engage in the debate over whether and how to fight it.

My own verse is usually free verse. The freer the better.

In the master there is a servant, in the servant a master.

To give them what I never had heals me. Some days I look at them and almost start to cry. I think, How can I love them more than I did the day before? But it keeps growing.

I like comedy. I would love to do comedy for a long time.

Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo.