I don't think about time. You're here when you're here. I think about today, staying in tune.

I don't do nothing I don't want to do.

No matter what you got, the blues is there

The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.

I went on to Cincinnati. I had got a taste of the big cities and them bright lights. I stayed there until I was about 18 or 19 and then I went on to Detroit.

I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won't tell nobody else! I can't help but wonder what happened.

All my life I been doin' what people tell me to do. Now, I'm telling them.