B. B. King

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that’s meant a life of one-nighters.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

My dad died, I think, at 87. So I’ll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I’m not trying to lose weight.

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

We often read transcripts of Trump’s speeches, and it’s something that everyone should actually do once in a while. When you strip away his blindingly confident delivery and just read his words, it is staggering how incoherent he is.

Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.

I can be sent a pop song, a reggae song, a rap song or an RandB song, and people know that Nicki Minaj is gonna deliver something special every time

People don’t have to like or support you, so you always have to say thank you.

I get more people approaching me about how good I was in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ than being in Coldplay.

I couldn’t live without my music, man. Or me mum.

I’m really afraid of getting hit by cars, like terrified of it. I’m terrified of crossing streets. I’m also very accident-prone…I think people aim for me.

I would say that one of your greatest accomplishments, Amy Poehler, is that you have so successfully used your art and comedy as a source of positivity in the world, by creating Smart Girls [an online community for girls, encouraging them to be their authentic selves], by making [Leslie in] Parks and Rec not only a positive feminist character but creating a good-hearted worldview within that program.

I quit driving, I’m not retired.

[on choosing films she will be in] I have a weird process, but the main thing is like this: I hear her voice in my head. There are a lot of wonderful scripts my agents can’t believe I pass on, but I do because I can’t hear the voice. It doesn’t appeal to me then. I’m really careful. Unless I hear the voice, I can’t do it.

I’ve never been cool and I don’t really care about being cool. It’s just an awful lot of time and hair gel wasted.

[on “The Cell”] I didn’t really want to do it, from reading the script. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was (Cell director) Tarsem (Singh) and his visuals that made me want to do it. It’s almost like you walk through a museum exhibit of an artist in a dark period of his life.

[On struggling to be taken seriously in the industry] Even now, people want to marginalize me. They want to attribute all my success to teenagers seeing my movies. I really resent it when people say, “It’s just a genre film; it’s a teen comedy.” It takes a lot of work to make these things have heart and resonance so they’re not just empty, disposable confections. But I don’t give a damn about other people’s perceptions, because I’ll show them. For women in this business, ascendancy is always a battle. It’s scrape and claw. I just try to stick to my guns and respect myself. I want to take the ingenues aside and say, “Value yourself! It’s O.K. if you have opinions!

Paul is not someone trying to be Freddie. He’s someone trying to take this somewhere else… I’m very excited about working it all out.

This heart of mine could never see what everybody knew but me