B. B King Quotes

I used to play – when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

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.

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess – she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

Cotton was a force of nature. There's a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

I'm more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I'm very proud of my hands.

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.

If there was no ladies, I wouldn't wanna be on the planet. Ladies, friends, and music – without those three, I wouldn't wanna be here.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.

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I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

I love to walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble and see my books there. It's fabulous.

I think a lot of writers are tempted to add complexity by over-complicating things, but always remember that most natural rules/laws are, at their core, simple. Start simple, and build from there, or you risk getting yourself and your readers tangled.

Political activities in Russia should be as transparent as possible. Financing political activities from abroad is something the state should keep an eye on.

B. B King Quotes

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