Sue Terry

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

We all played bad before we played good.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.

For a long time I wasn’t listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty–it would bring back memories I didn’t want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I’m not alive ’cause I’m not making it. And if it was good, I hated it ’cause I wasn’t doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious ’cause I could’ve done it better…

I guess you can look at me, and tell I’m the old man. My name is BB King.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.