I don't think I've ever been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody's always sinking.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.

When you got nothing, you got nothin' to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.

It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. 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. People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.