Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain... you hear them and they're affixed to you.

Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.

Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain... you hear them and they're affixed to you.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.

I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.

Just as we have two eyes and two feet, duality is part of life.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.

The Devil is like a strainer that separates the mud from the gold.

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.

A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'

Ever since I was a child I've always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there's always a melody in there.

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

I'm ready to do something with Lady Gaga or Andrea Bocelli. I'm really grateful that nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.

Most people don't have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.

The best part of touring, still, is touching people's hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.

There is no person that love cannot heal; there is no soul that love cannot save.

There's a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.

There's never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.

When you fly to New York, sometimes they put you on hold and you just go round and around in a holding pattern. Sometimes in a concert, I feel other spirits in a holding pattern that they want to land through my heart and through my fingers.

Your mind is a magnet. You don't attract what you need or what you want; you attract who you are. And I love who I am!

When a baby comes you can smell two things the smell of flesh which smells like chicken soup and the smell of lilies the flower of another garden the spiritual garden.

Most people dont have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

Just as we have two eyes and two feet duality is part of life.

One day there will be no borders no boundaries no flags and no countries and the only passport will be the heart.

The guitar is your first wings. Its assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination.

Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable of transmuting emotion into music.

Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

When I heard his first songs, Dylan was answering certain questions that I had all my life been asking myself.

The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

All my songs are where I am.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.