I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi.

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice?

Robert Johnson? No, I didn't know him, personally.

Our little house was way back in the country. We had one house close to us, and hell the next one would've been a mile. If you got sick, you could holler and wouldn't nobody hear you.

I went to school, but they didn't give you too much schooling because just as soon as you was big enough, you get to working in the fields. I guess I was a big boy for my age.

I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got a long memory.

There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.

I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing.

Man, you don't know how I felt that afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice.

That Mississippi sound, that Delta sound is in them old records. You can hear it all the way through.

I was so wild and crazy and dumb in my car. It didn't run but 30 miles an hour. You made do.

Now that I'm gettin' old enough to get some money, I'd like to have some money. I don't get much made, I need to conquer a big chunk of money. Not quit playin' but quit playin' so hard.

I was messing around with the harmonica... but I was 13 before I got a real good note out of it.

Of course that was my idol, Son House. I think he did a lot for the Mississippi slide down there.

Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.

I stone got crazy when I saw somebody run down them strings with a bottleneck. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and I said that I had to learn.

Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues.

If you got something you don't want other people to know, keep it in your pocket.

I got up one Christmas morning and we didn't have nothing to eat. We didn't have an apple, we didn't have an orange, we didn't have a cake, we didn't have nothing.

My grandmother, she say I shouldn't be playing. I should go to church. Fially, I say I'm going do this, I'm going do it. And she got where she didn't bother me about it.

I rambled all the time. I was just like that, like a rollin' stone.

I wanted to get out of Mississippi in the worst way. Go back? What I want to go back for?

I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi.

Going to Chicago was like going out of the world.

The thing about San Francisco is that it has this kind of magical quality.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing.

I remember him watching me through the crack of a door singing with a hairbrush. I was in front of his mirror. I think he wanted me to sing. He would get me on the table and make me sing sometimes or play the piano. He was very encouraging on that front.

But enough joking. I am singing. This is all my life.

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.

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

It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.

In so many interviews, they bring up the sexual aspect of the record. I've had some journalists say it sounds like I'm lying down in bed singing with a microphone. It gets so old!

I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.

I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I'd have made it any other way.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

My father started me singing in church.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

I looked in the audience. There were no strangers. Everybody was singing and cheering and hugging. That was a beautiful picture to look at.

I have always been intrigued with singing and I actually started my career in musical comedies.

I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.

When I started really singing I was 17, 18 years old. I used to go around trying to be a singer in the Bronx. My knees would shake but I learned by doing.

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.

Singing is my life. It has always been my life. It will always be my life.

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

Dysphonia is not a singing problem. It's a voice box issue in the muscle on the voice, very different from having a nodule on the vocal cords, which I've never had. I'm lucky that I've never had that. It needs a long renewal time, and even today, I am still addressing it.

They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best.