I'm quite private. And I never wanted to be the biggest star in the world really. So in that sense I've got a good balance of doing great shows of making an appearance every now and then and writing music and I don't really have to do much else.

Oh I will always be honest with my music. The records are black boxes for me. Like if you want to know who I am my views my perspective things I love things I hate my convictions my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

Since I was a kid I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties Chicago blues of the Fifties West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

In a weird kind of way music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

City people live the city. We live in L.A. New York we live in places where it's chaotic and you never know what's gonna happen. And that's the music - you never know what's gonna happen.

Life is like music it must be composed by ear feeling and instinct not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases though not often.

Pop music will never be low brow.

I'll give up this sort of touring madness certainly but music-everything is based on music. No I'll never stop my music.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

I think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking definitely lacking in music today.

Stone walls confine a tinker cold iron binds a witch but a musician's music can never be fettered for it lives first in her heart and mind.

Nevertheless the passions whether violent or not should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust and music even in situations of the greatest horror should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it and thereby always remain music.

A few can touch the magic string and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing but die with all their music in them!

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try.

This land is your land and this land is my land sure but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I've never missed a gig yet. Music makes people happy and that's why I go on doing it - I like to see everybody smile.

Secretly I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix but I could never quite pull it off.

You can never get silence anywhere nowadays have you noticed?

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts but I never noticed.