Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.

Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it.

I really believe in clothes that are new, that are innovative - but that everybody wants to wear.

They're still in the game, and they're trying to get back into it.

Records can ruin you. That's why it's important to be as intimately familiar as possible with the history of recorded music, I guess. In a way, it's an argument for record collecting.

Everyone came here to do something magnificent.

Reaction is what changes your understanding of the world.

All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete.