B. B. King

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

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.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!

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.

For all the hard times and tough challenges I faced during different periods of my life, I think I was lucky or blessed or both. When things looked bleak, a good guide would appear to set me straight. Someone once asked me about the villains who got in my way, the bad guys who wanted to trip me up or take me out. I don’t remember any. Maybe it’s my nature to remember the good and forget the bad, or maybe it’s my destiny to lock onto the righteous for help.

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

The fabulous places I’ve been, wonderful things that’ve happened, great people I’ve met ought to make a story.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

What we play is life.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

It’s not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.