And I can do the rock clubs if I have to.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

I've been waiting for that bright sunshine to show up and shine in my back door someday.

In the blues, it just takes so long for us to get recognized.

I don't want to be in some big beautiful place that nobody want me, because I play the blues.

But let's face it, I still have to look at my self and look at the things I've done down the stretch.

In the States, it takes you a lifetime just to get from Chicago's South Side to the West Side.

So I cut out all the drinkin' and hangin' out and stuff like that early on.

Before I left, I opened a lot of doors for a lot of people to play the blues.

And I can do the rock clubs if I have to.

But you know, I still had a dream of being able to go back home and tour.

I think I'm the most positive guy still going in my generation, and I'm out there to prove that.

But I did that, and I created another blues scene, another something I can sing about.

But there was not a job that could say that Luther Allison didn't do his job.

I mean, look how many musicians have come through and played beside me, and I'm workin' and they're not.

I focused on how these people became how they were.

We played the same thing in Europe we played in the States.

I have as much input to the blues; I just never got the chance, the opportunity or maybe the respect.

I look in music magazines now and see things on Luther Allison, and my name's getting out there more, thanks to all the good people at Alligator Records and at my management company.

When I got to Chicago I had to find my way.

I want people to recognize Luther Allison when I play.

But my big thing was always the blues.

Well, I've had to deal with everything in my life... leavin' the family, learnin' what not and what to do.

I want to play in a place people want to hear me.

What I want to do, is play music for somebody who believe in me.

Me being a skinny guy, I could crawl into the steel pit.

Well, I first started going to Europe in the late '70s.

Buddy Guy finally got a break and made it. And Buddy Guy deserves it.

But I never had that commercial opportunity to be played on the radio, so how could I be popular?

I had the qualifications, but I was not chosen.

The blues is the foundation and its got to carry the top. The other part of the scene the rock n roll and the jazz are the walls of the blues.

And I was very comfortable with this band even when we disagreed. It takes a long time to feel comfortable enough to disagree with somebody. When everything happened, it just was really confusing. It's like our weaknesses were nurtured and brought out front by outsiders.

My mother always carries around these postcard pictures of me.

I don't want to smoke on screen, as I will be sending a wrong message to my fans, and I appeal to my costars too, to avoid smoking scenes if possible.

I try to go with the flow and have faith that everything is going to work out.

Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway.

I leaned out one last time and caught a snowflake on my tongue. They tasted so good, so pure and so divine, like nothing I had ever tasted from the sky.

Anytime you have an opportunity as an actor to really grow along with your character, I think that's a real gift.

I had seen 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and I thought that was a different kind of film than I'd seen before, with that kind of editing and slick camera movements.

You are not going to change me and if you do, it will look like a fraud, it will be a fraud.

He's a million rubber bands in his resilience.

I play rec softball sort of religiously. I'm a huge baseball fan. When I lived in New York City, I'd go to a Yankees game every week.

We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible.

I have always been interested in religion, especially in forms of ecstatic religion, where people are touched directly by the Spirit and go completely out of themselves.

We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

Gun Control A measure to ensure that guns always point in one direction.

If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Blogging and traditional media work together. Twitter complements traditional media.

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.