It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

I was coerced into taking piano lessons in the early '50s. It was a quite unpleasant experience.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

I saw Suicide in '74 and it was pretty horrifying.

Even by the time I was four or five, I had Gene Autry records.

Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics.

The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with.

By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.

I really feel fortunate to have been around then because there have been good and bad years in rock but the best years were '55 to early '61. I got to see Buddy Holly and everybody else.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

From '69 til '76, I never played in public. I would play by myself at home.

Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

I never really followed grunge.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

I quit the tax job then and decided that I was going to play in a band. I answered ads in the Village Voice and went through two days of auditioning for bands.

You're all my heart ever talks about.

'Strictly' is a bit like scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup Final or sinking the final putt in the Ryder Cup - only a few people get the opportunity to do it, and they have got to be famous.

A reward once given becomes a right.

If the players understand and accept that their leader is steering their direction through thoughtful, careful measures, then they will pull together to give the best effort every time.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was thank you that would suffice.

The best comedy, I feel, comes in a drama because it balances each other out.

The attitude is very important. Because, your behavior radiates how you feel.

Nobody wants a unitary voice of authority any more.

Jah is love, or God, whichever way you might accept it.

'Jurassic Park' was able to get away with big, dynamic filmmaking that might be out of place in another kind of story.

You know, there's a difference between politicians and leaders. Politicians read poll numbers and compromise. Leaders do what's morally right.

In my life, I am often reminded that there is a destiny that rules over us, because no one whom I know about or whom I read about seems to be completely happy during a long time.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

What I envisioned back in the 1970s was this thing you would wear as 'glass' over your right eye, and you could see the world though that glass. The glass then reconfigures the things you see.

People who hate God... take it out on innocent people.

What the world needs most for its stability, and what the U.S. needs for its national security, is economic growth, which is driven first and foremost by expanded carbon use.

I do myself up kind of like a doll. I have a doll collection and I look at their outfits and kind of imitate them.

The serenity prayer, 'God grant me the strength to accept...' That's a prayer that's actually in my car. I say it every day.

A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves. They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political. Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.

I first became familiar with Dave Eggers's work when I was living in San Francisco and enrolled at USF's MFA Program.

Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we 'should' do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority.

I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.

I grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Kenova. It's the city where the plane crashed from Marshall University. I watched the mountain burn, and my cousins were the volunteer firemen. I was 6 years old at the time.

Partly I resented being perceived as weak because I was a girl.