Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself.

This whole thing that's happened to me, you see, this whole success thing..it hasn't yet really compromised the position that I took a long time ago in Texas, that was to be true to myself, to be the person that I...that was on inside of me and not play games.

At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I'm gonna show 'em how to do it.

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn't start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not.

You better not compromise yourself, it's all you've got.

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle ----- [expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win.