Dion DiMucci

“I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.”

“Trying to explain what community is to someone who's never experienced it is like trying to explain what an artichoke tastes like.”

“Music is an expression. It's almost like a diary in my life, you know. You express your perceptions and your view on life - your world view.”

“With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.”

“I never knew I was a songwriter. I didn't even know I was a singer. My parents just got me a guitar 'cause my uncle told them to get me one, and I started fooling with it.”

“In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.”

“Be authentic, true to yourself, genuine. Question what you really love along the way. There are so many voices out there. And you can lose yourself.”

“By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.”

“I tell you, gospel music is very uplifting. It's great. It's just a lot of fun to write, and it's wonderful for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit. It's just great.”

“For me, God's country is sirens and subways and all kinds of ethnic groups trying to cross the street all at once.”

“I never got into this business to do interviews. It was always about the music.”

“I used to think God only liked organ music.”

“I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.”

“If you don't have God in your life, you have to fill up on something. And you usually reach for the four great substitutes, the classical addictions: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. So you try to fill yourself up.”

“You constantly have to take inventory, not get on someone else's agenda. You want to write something that's poignant and moves people.”

“While Paul Simon is revered, I don't think people get how deep he is. I love the guy. He comes from that early street-harmony, first-generation type of rock and rollers. He gets it.”

“I just love to do the songs, and that's what I'm still about - taking people on a trip. A good trip.”

“There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.”

“If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.”

“Trains had the greatest bass sound in the world.”