We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.

We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

The arts shows that you're civilized, and it makes life sweet. So you can exist and you can buy more things and you can be more - we're dealing with a form of commercialism that obscures a prior relationship to quality, and it's a national problem.