Willis Earl Beal quotes:

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.

I don't have a computer, but when I get access to one, I'm always looking myself up on Google, because it's exciting.

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.

I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.

Everything is this distorted mishmash of pop culture that pulls from this era and that era and is just thrown at the wall. These people have no clue what anything really means. There are guys out there getting a million hits for a video.

Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!

I am nothing; nothing is everything

In a way, the whole music industry is just catering to the inherent esteem issues all these artists have - it lays it all out on the line and baits the artist, like a light baits a mosquito. And you go right into it. With every comment on the internet, you go up, you go down, and it's a big shitshow full of uneducated people.

My delusion outweighs my talent by far and it always will, because if it doesn't, then there's no point in living.