B. B. King

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about, but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I guess you can look at me, and tell I’m the old man. My name is BB King.

I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll.

I’ve put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.

I have no enabler bone in my body – not one. I’m sort of like, ‘Oh, are you going crazy? I’ll be back in an hour.’

Ghost stories really scare me. I have such a big imagination that after I watch a horror movie like The Grudge, I look in the corners of my room for the next two days.

My little sister Stella partly looks up to me. She depends on me and I always try to set a good example for her.

I’m obsessed with neon sneakers.

No one wants to quit when he’s losing and no one wants to quit when he’s winning.

I never thought that I would have a career in show business…

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society… unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

One of my friends was part of the popular group and I remember her telling them, ‘Come on, we should let Vanessa in.’ This one other girl didn’t want to let me into the group. Finally, I kind of got accepted and became good friends with her. I don’t know, the whole popularity scene is funny.

[On a drunken experience] I seemed to have lost all control of my body. My brother Gary found me outside the house in my underwear.

To a smart girl men are no problem – they’re the answer.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I’d had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

My daughter is in love with Adele. She listens to her every day. To see someone with that much passion and soul move a 9-year-old is amazing and it’s magical.

First of all, you have to understand that I’m like anybody else. When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.

I hate cliché. And when you’re a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the ’70s, which we know all about, and the ’80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the ’90s, which was a great time for experimentation…to get to this place, I’m really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I’ve been involved with.

The most romantic thing, a lovely boy bought me a dress once. He got my measurements, actually they were from “The Notebook” and I had them sitting somewhere, and he found them and bought me this dress, tailor-made, this beautiful little black cocktail dress. And I thought that was very, very classy.