B. B. King

You never miss what you’ve never had. I never had any other life. I didn’t know any other life.

A lot of people believe what other people say.

I think I’ve 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 haven’t yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe I’d reached that peak. But I’m 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, I’ll 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.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

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

The crowds treat me like my last name. When I go onstage people usually stand up, I never ask them to, but they do. They stand up and they don’t know how much I appreciate it.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.

There’s only two types of music. The stuff you can write down and the stuff you can’t. The stuff that you can’t write down is Jazz. Everything else is Polka.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.