Quotes from Jack White

I grew up in the 90s in the time of grunge when if you didn't go on stage in jeans and a T shirt you weren't 'real.' That seemed ridiculous to me.

I won't join another band again.

With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black.

I think that sometimes love gets in the way of itself - you know, love interrupts itself. We want things so much that we sabotage them.

I would never purposely sing a song about someone I love, I wouldn't want to embarrass them. But for someone I don't like... I would definitely do that.

My mother's the youngest of 10 children too, so we have sort of a special bond in that we know what that feels like. It's a strange spot to be in.

There's Catholic guilt about things, then there's the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you're not really allowed to enjoy them.

People aren't buying records like they used to, so it's nice to try to figure out a way to make them do it. I would enjoy the same thing to own an old movie house, to try to trick people to come in - like having 3-D or Smell-o-Vision or Vibra-Vision or something. Mcguffins to get people interested.

The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.

I never wanted to play guitar when I was younger. I wanted to be a drummer because everybody plays guitar, and I didn't want to do what everybody else wanted to do.

It's a sound bite. It's very of this age, because that's what people want.

I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues.

I keep guitars that are, you know, the neck's a little bit bent and it's a little bit out of tune. I want to work and battle it and conquer it and make it express whatever attitude I have at that moment. I want it to be a struggle.

If you have twenty guys in the room and you just bring in one girl, you change the entire mood and everyone plays different.

Some people remaster their records six, seven times, remix it three, four times, spend a million hours, then they always go back and hear a demo of it and they'll say, 'Aw that sounds so much better than the final mix.'

My mother was 45 when she had me, so when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents.

The auctioneer is talking for both people, and that's the big revelation about, 'Oh, that's what they're doing.' They're just doing it very fast, so you could kind of miss on that. He's speaking for you, because people in the crowd don't have a voice, so that's what really makes it compelling.

I think the sensitivity that you need to create certain things sometimes would spill over into things that shouldn't have bothered me.

I think you can't really escape any kind of spiritual education as a child, whether it's New Age or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever it is. You can't escape it, even if you completely disagree with it, you still have it as a foundation that you base things off of.

An auctioneer is such a uniquely American thing. I keep thinking in my head, perhaps it's not as American as I think, but it feels so Southern. It feels so American. Like, hundreds of years of American tradition is involved in it.

When you put something out there into the world, there's all these words you don't want to hear, that you hope people don't say. I don't like anything that starts with 're' - like retro, reinvent, recreate - I hate that. It's always like living in the past - copying, emulating.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

Inspiration and work ethic - they ride right next to each other.

The secret is planning your work and working your plan. If you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you arrive? You can't stumble upon your destination.