I've never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself.

I wouldn't warm to [Chuck Berry] even if I was cremated next to him.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

I am not doing it just for the money or for you.I am doing it for me.

You don't find a style. A style finds you

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.