Quotes from Dion DiMucci

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

I couldn't wait to get out of school in junior high to get with Willie Green to pick up some of the riffs he knew.

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

I moved my family down to Miami to stay with my father-in-law, Jack, for a while. Best move I ever made.

The form of the blues helps us express our joys, our fears, our - anything you want to express. And it helps you get it out instead of it spiraling inward, and you're getting twisted up and exploding. So it's a bit of salvation.

It's hard to explain music when it goes in your gut and makes left and right and turns and moves you and resonates with you.

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

My definition of the blues is the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God.

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.

We all fled from religion. Living la vida loca, whatever. The '60s, you know. But it always stayed in my heart. As I got older, I started coming back to religion.

I used to think God only liked organ music.

I left Columbia in the mid-'60s. I had a guaranteed contract for, like, $100,000 a year. And I just let it go. And I wasn't a rich man. There were a lot of bad vibes around the whole thing.

I don't believe in being a victim. I think with information and motivation, you can do anything.

If you make excuses, you're going to believe in a lie. And I don't believe in that lie that you can't make it, that somebody is trying to hold you back.

People didn't know I played guitar on all the hit records I had. I've never been in an acoustic guitar magazine and I'd put myself up against anybody.