When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.

There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead.

Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

Jimmy Stewart said he stopped making movies because he didn't like the way he looked on screen anymore. I'm more the guy who says I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me.

I never looked at music as a serious ven­ture. There was very little encouragement from my family. I didn't have anybody to entertain, so it was hard to get motivated.

and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades