“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

“He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

“It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.”

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

“Where the road sloped upward beyond the trees, I sat and looked toward the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell which room was hers. All I had to do was find the one window toward the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

“Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.”

“But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement.”

I'm too high, but I ain't left the ground.

My mother gave me an understanding that as good as you think you are, you're not so great. There's always room for improvement. The reality is when people don't have someone to give them a sense of guidance, and say, "Hey, man, that's not happening," it's really hard.

I was so bad. Out of control. So glad I turned out to be a nice guy.

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.

Handicaps are really to be used another way to benefit yourself and others.

My mother told me, if you call yourself 'Little' Stevie Wonder, you'd better be as good as Little Willie John.

My mother would cry about my blindness and the hopelessness of my ever seeing, but I told her I wasn't sad. I believed God had something for me to do.

The musical flags of the world should fly at half mast because truly one of the greatest guitarists in the world and king of the blues has died. I have cherished him and so has the rest of the world who knew him and loved him for his entire career. As we pain, we must celebrate that his music, his style of playing and singing will last forever, from the recordings that he has done and the influence that he has had and will have on guitarists all over this planet. Long live the spirit of B.B. King.

You've got to remember that 25 is a great time because, you know, you're passed that 21 thing and it's a high point, a high peak, in life where you're old enough to say what you have discovered, but you're still open to discovering more.

If you think of every single continent there is, on every continent, there is something, a natural resource that every continent has, or sources, that they can really survive with that, or they can trade with that. But a lot of the developed nations have taken those things from those places and have claimed it and, therefore, they're dependent on those other nations.

I never imagined I'd meet Berry Gordy who told me when he first heard me sing, "You know, your singing's okay, but I like your harmonica playing better."

I always wanted my mother to be Queen for a Day. I always used to watch that show that came on television.

I love Aretha [Franklin] and I've loved her all my life. I think she's an incredible songstress, obviously. She consistently has had this incredible voice. I remember when she was singing gospel in her father's church.

Unfortunately, we have warring in the world, so the youngest minds, the brilliant minds, are sent off to war. I think that, you know, you have brilliant people with great possibilities and that's why I really am not really for war. I really am not.

When I wrote the words and I have the music, I felt, wow, you know, this has got to be right. I got to sing it right.

The exciting thing about a songwriter is that, you know, particularly if you're a songwriter and an artist and you play the parts and you're producing it and all that, you have various times you have to critique what you do.