"I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time."

"I don't think there's ever been any music quite like what we came up with."

"There's nothing like living a long time to create a depth and soulfulness in your music."

"The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources."

"I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all."

"I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me."

"Sometimes I'm more true when I'm up onstage than I'm able to be in my regular life. It's not as exciting to be at home, but I've got to learn how to make that work, and then I will be an ordinary woman."

"I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids."

"Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there."

"There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind."