The most profound, tangible influence in my life has been my wife, Monique. I don't know that I would even be alive were it not for her, and I certainly would not be the person that I am today.

We started out when I was 6 years old. We played ukuleles and sang Everly Brothers songs.

I can't imagine anything more worthwhile than doing what I most love. And they pay me for it.

Music is very spiritual, it has the power to bring people together.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I used to go to these old tent revivals and listen to the gospel singers. If you think rock and roll is energetic, it pales in comparison to a Pentecostal tent revival.

I started out playing ukulele when I was 5 or 6 years old.

So yeah, I am definitely a blues man at heart.

I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz.

I love music more just in and of itself. I love harmony and rhythm.

I've always had a great love of music since childhood. It changes every day.. every time you write, it's a new experience. It's a self expression.

To wonder is to be wise.

We are made of all those who have built and broken us.

Your passions don’t have to connect to one another and no one needs to sign off on them. Passion isn’t logical… it’s only the fuel which keeps our souls alive. Let it be that simple.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

Frankly, if you do politics, you should not be thinking about your dignity.

Politics is human beings; it's addition rather than subtraction.

I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into.

I am a soldier and accustomed to risking my life every day. I am full of the fire of youth; I cannot act with the restraint of an accomplished diplomat.

It's not in doubt that tobacco is far more lethal than hard drugs.

Those policies [of Jean-Marie Le Pen ]I find repellent. I believe many people right across consist the world do. There is no future in that type of narrow minded racism and nationalism.