Marcia was incredibly organized, obsessively neat ... I mean she folded her underwear like origami.

Guilt is the major motivating force in my life.

Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.

Probably the only thing my mom and dad agreed on was the vital importance of guilt.

Marcia was incredibly organized, obsessively neat ... I mean she folded her underwear like origami.

Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish.

I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.