B. B. King

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

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway. He has to get through you first before he gets into the house to get your family. I’m one of those guys who wants to be in that door.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

In the 80s, when I was a little girl, this whole Midtown area was a different world. These are the streets that I walked, and learned my lessons on, and heard the music, and witnessed disenfranchised people, and people who just had dreams and hopes. Every pimp, every prostitute, every drug dealer, every Broadway dreamer wishing they could be a writer, or a musician, or an actor.

I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.

Would you believe me if I said you were three shades short of all my favorite hues and that I’ve been trying for years to pick words from my garden throat in attempts to explain to you all the things I can’t explain. Or what if I said I have nothing to say other than I love you in the simplest of ways.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

A lot of people do have tragic childhoods. But you know what? Get over it.

Greatest thing we can produce is character. Everything else can be taken from us, but not our character.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

The present method of producing milk is too laborious. I believe that we can make milk by scientific process, eliminating the cow.

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

All begins with you surrounding yourself with the right people—the good and authentic people—and “unsurrounding” yourself with the wrong people. And we both know there are plenty of wrong people in this world.

Careful. We don’t want to learn from this.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.