B.B. King

Touring a segregated America – forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you don’t realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

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.

I don’t like anybody to be angry with me. I’d rather have friends.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn’t do.

I love the beach. I love the sea. All my life I live within – in front of the sea.

[On leaving Brooklyn] I left the day I graduated high school.

I choose you, again and again at the start and finish of every single day, no matter the season, no matter the age. I choose you to struggle and succeed with, to fight and wake up with, to love and grow old with. I choose you, knowing there are still trails we must travel, knowing there are mountains left to climb. I choose you to always be by my side.

There are no limitations to any of our dreams.

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

Trouble is part of your life — if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

I have dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings. And I’ve never been too impressed.

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

Like all things vast and beautiful, I want to know the depths of which you exist. It has never been enough to wade in the shallows.

You can’t put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken!

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.

I like to surprise myself.

Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!

Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.