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.

That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.

Gold will never free your father, the price, my dear, is you instead.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed... so drastically, I couldn't believe it myself.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun, and it's been the ruin of many a poor boy and God I know I'm one.

With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks, you've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books.