John Lee Hooker Quotes

The greatest art comes out of warmth and conviction and deep feeling, but then, very few people, even geniuses, have all that.

If it don't touch my soul then I can't listen to it.

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

The music was more than music - at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous.

I am more greatly moved by people who struggle to express themselves...I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion.

I suffer so much in this life. That is what they [the audience] are feeling when I sing, that is why they cry. People who felt nothing in this life cannot sing.

My blues are so simple, but so few people can play it right

There's not one reference in that thing that doesn't play. People deal with emotions in music all the time, but comedians are always talking about what they see. But we seldom talk about what we feel.

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

Why do two people fall in love? It's a mystery.

People are flawed. I like peaking into their flaws. The way to humanize them is not to play them in any general way, but to make them very specific. If you make them specific, they have hopes and dreams and loves and vulnerabilities and quirks and you get to know them and you get to appreciate them.

Meeting people in a genuine way and feeling like there is a vital and meaningful connection going on makes me come alive.

That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.

Writers don't often say anything that readers don't already know, unless its a news story. A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew but did not know they knew. Or did not realize everyone else knew, too. This produces a warm sense of fellow feeling and is the best a writer can do.

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love.

I don't know that sex always has to have feelings, but I think that friendship always does.

I love going to plays. There's a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can't entirely explain why.

It's nice to have people who will feel guilty for you.

I like people with depth, I like people with emotion, I like people with a strong mind, an interesting mind, a twisted mind, and also someone that can make me smile.

Filming is physically and emotionally hard, especially acting in something like this, where we go into the honest feelings of these people. But it's also very exciting because there's an adrenaline that's pumping (through you) when you're doing these scenes.

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.

I try to tell a story when I'm playing. I try to make an emotional connection when I'm playing versus before I played just to play. Now there's a sense of purpose of why I play, of how I play. So people can actually feel what I'm saying to them.

What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?

I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.