Quotes from Dion DiMucci

When I didn't do 'Runaround Sue' on the 'Ed Sullivan Show,' for example, I didn't listen to my inner voice. I should have.

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.

I come from this macho Italian neighborhood. When I was thirteen, during those real vulnerable, impressionable years, and a boy starts becoming a man, to make that transition, and you start making decisions, and you start developing virtue and principles - I never made the transition.

People were watching the TV set, and they said three rock-and-rollers died - Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, including the pilot. I walked out of the hotel. I got on the bus alone. Their clothes were hanging on the racks, their guitars on the seats.

Doo-wop was full of blues for me.

It was a lot of fun in the back of that bus with Ritchie Valens, Buddy and The Big Bopper sharing each other's songs.

I was guaranteed a hundred thousand dollars a year for five years, which was big money in the early 60's. You think, acquiring that should cool you out, but for me it wasn't true.

Sometimes I think I know everything, but I also underestimate what God really is.

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

Early on, I tried to sing, but sustaining a note was something I wasn't comfortable with. So I tried to get off of the note as soon as I could.

I've got these die-hard fans on Facebook, and you'd swear they haven't heard anything I've done since 1962, 1963.

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.

There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.

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

A lot of people have many misconceptions about religion. I know what I'm talking about for myself. My mind is very ordered, so to speak. I need to put things in order.

1967 was the bleakest, darkest, most emotional period of my life.

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

My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.

I thought you had to be humble to become a saint, but a priest told me it takes all kinds to make it to heaven.

The point here is that I enjoyed singing. I enjoyed the rhythm of it. I grew up listening to Louis Prima, who was also rhythmic.

Songs, to me, have always been kind of like a diary, you know - and, say, when I did 'Teenager In Love,' maybe I was 16.

I have a full life off the road. I was never in it just for the money or the career. That's why I'm comfortable with myself. I know who I am out of the spotlight.

That is amazing that a guy like St. Jerome who lived in the fourth century could bring people together. Sometimes you think people are dead and forgotten. But they can actually bring you together in the best way.

The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.