B. B. King

I’m more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I’m very proud of my hands.

The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

There have been times when I’ve been around people I wouldn’t care to be around, and if I could get away I would. We have a word in Mississippi – we just don’t seem to set horses. In other words, this person is always saying something that gets your goat, y’understand? But when people treat you mean, you dislike them for that, but not because of their person, who they are. I was born and raised in a segregated society, but when I left there I had nobody I disliked other than the people that’d mistreated me, and that only lasted for as long as they were mistreating me.

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

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

In life you have three options with any situation that is a challenge. Remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it.

Know your goal, make a plan and pull the trigger.

People will try to fix world but world will fix people.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.

The South has a future which it can shape for itself, and avoid the mistakes which the more populous parts of the country have made.

Enjoy what other people do and learn from them.

In the end, you’re just a renter anyway. You only own these things for as long as you live. After that, who knows? If I live until I’m 80, I’ll have 30 more years of collecting. If the collection is big enough, I’ll build a museum. And if not, I’ll leave it to a museum.

You are only as happy as your saddest child.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Flawed and (still) worthy.

I know nothing and my heart aches.