They wasn't gonna give you nothin'. I didn't care as long as they let me play my music. Cash on the spot... You cheat me and I'm gonna get me some money, too.

It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .

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

I remember back in Detroit, I used to go to the Apex Bar every night after I got off work. The bartender there used to call me Boom Boom. I don't know why, but he did.

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.

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

I hitchhiked, took trucks 'n' trains - anything that would pick me up. I stopped in Memphis for about six months and they found me and come got me. Stayed about a month an' split again.