"I left home when I was 17 with Joe Williams."

"The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?"

"I didn't come out until 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. Sleep all day, sleep and cook and eat, stay in the house. That sun is hot, anyway. It ain't right out there."

"I used to play too with a boy who played a saxophone. We didn't play no blues, we'd play a lot of love songs - 'Stardust', 'Blue Moon', 'Out Cold Again', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Stars Fell On Alabama', a lot of different stuff."

"As the earth spins through space, a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world - most of its food, productive machines, doctors, engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world's poor."

"I have too much money invested in sweaters."

"I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money."

"In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished."