I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.

What I do and what I record only work for the moment.

I'm sad and blue, about nobody but you. I told you that I loved you right from the start, you told me the same and now you try to break my little heart.

Lonesome. Lonesome. I know what it means. Here all by my lonesome, dreaming empty dreams. Weary. Weary at the close of day, wondering if tomorrow brings me joy or sorrow.

I think of these things as obstacles rather than opportunities, because if they were opportunities it means I actually took the business of doing them seriously. To take myself too seriously is the gentle kiss of death.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.

Who told you I was a musician?

I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.

Home is where you hang your hat.

I don't do anything mysterious on purpose. I'm less than forthcoming, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm mysterious. It just means I'm not inclined to go there.

I don't have a home. I'm on the road, more or less.

I don't think music should be played anywhere near politics. The two don't go together.

I got out of the music industry many years ago. I had a charlatan for a producer who I wanted nothing to do with. He's dead now, so I guess I can't beat that horse any more. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I just went on about my business doing what I do and not involving myself with record companies, except for distribution.

I have a visual sense for the music. It has to stay true to a certain sense of period. I rely on a sense of colors and mood in my approach to the arrangement.

I just do a random roulette wheel version of what I've recorded or sometimes tunes I haven't recorded. It's a collection of whatever happens, happens.

I tend to notice work.

I think there's a preoccupation with the American market to make excuses and justify its past. If it isn't current, it means somebody has to make an excuse for it. If it's 'cult,' it gives it a sense of illegitimate legitimacy.

I would like to speak 10 languages.

I'm not interested in stirring anybody up through music. If you're going to stir people up, it has to be a thought process that has nothing to do with music. I see music as having to do with an internal thing. Something that stirs you up is external.

I've got a very behind-the-scenes personality. I don't know how I became a performer. I like to stay discreet, out of the public eye, very low-key.

If I had mastered the Spanish language to any extent, I might have gone in that direction.

If you're not interested in history, if you're living for the day, you need some sort of cliche hook. I certainly don't think of myself as a cult anything. It's a strange thing to even consider pursuing.

Music doesn't really require whether the person's a young person or old person for whatever kind of music it is.

My views on music, and life in general, are completely out of step with everything that's going on. I've always been out of step. The only thing that interests me is history, reviewing the past and making something out of it.

Other musicians are basically personalities who want to make a name for themselves. All I do is sing old songs in the best way I can. What else is there to know? If you were a blacksmith, what would people need to know about you other than whether you can make a good horseshoe?

The only thing that interests me is history - reviewing the past and making something out of it.

There's a little Christmas in all of us, I guess. Even in me.

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

I wanted to be a part of the Disney history.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

The history of Christianity, therefore, must be of concern to all who are interested in the record of man and particularly to all who seek to understand the contemporary human scene.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of our game is the black race.

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

I got a call to come in and meet Fox, and the rest is history.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.