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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

B. B. King Quotes

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

– B. B. King

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!

– B. B. King

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

– B. B. King

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

– B. B. King

When you don’t have much money, you worry that they’ll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won’t know where you are.

– B. B. King

I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

– B. B. King

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.

– B. B. King

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

– B. B. King

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

– B. B. King

I don’t feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there’s something that I really did do. I believe I’m just ordinary. And I’d like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.

– B. B. King

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

– B. B. King

My dad died, I think, at 87. So I’ll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I’m not trying to lose weight.

– B. B. King

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

– B. B. King

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

– B. B. King

My wife Martha used to call me Ol’ Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I’m in torture, when in truth, I’m in ecstasy. I don’t do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.

– B. B. King

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.

– B. B. King

I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

– B. B. King

I almost chopped my thumb off once. Just before I left home, I was about ten or eleven years old, and I was trying to open a bone. Can you imagine that? A bone! I was trying to get the marrow out of a bone, and I took the ax, and I went to chop it, and something slipped, and the ax went right down there and damn near cut it off.

– B. B. King

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