"I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed."

"There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away."

"Long made it possible for me to get on records, so what little money he did take from me, if any at all, he was entitled to it. He didn't take something from me."

"My guitar was loud as hell, and I had no sympathy for anybody else."

"I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again."

"When somebody blazes a path to a highway that never end, you should appreciate 'em some."

"Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat."

"From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto."

"Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them."

"Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people."

"When I was hitch-hiking, people had to follow me, 'cause I didn't stay long."

"I don't sit here and dream because I don't care about the future. I wouldn't take nothin' for my past and I've got enough behind me that I can write forever."