I'll tell you a little secret about the Blues: it's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.

Primitive societies, or social groupings, had shamans, and some of them even more recent in time. Shamans were tricksters. There was a tradition of the trickster, and the trickster was a clown, a humorous fellow. His task was to trick the gods, to humor the gods into laughing, so that there was access to the divine - because laughter is a moment when we are completely ourselves.

It is impossible for an abortion clinic to have a waiting list of more than nine months.

I think it would be fair and right to use some of my land and wealth for a drug-rehab center or an Indian school.

Every day I break my own personal record for number of days I have been alive.

Language is the most elementary aspect to our humanness, probably. In addition to that, it's the embodiment, it's the apotheosis of the human experience, it's the way we summarize ourselves.

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.