B. B. King

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

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 tell my children now that they are older, ‘If something happens to me… don’t make no big fuss over me. Don’t make no big expense on my funeral. Don’t put any pressure on the rest of the family. I’ve loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don’t create this big expense for the family.’

I realize that advice is worth what it costs – that is, nothing.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.

The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.

Don’t wait until you’re in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

I choose you, again and again at the start and finish of every single day, no matter the season, no matter the age. I choose you to struggle and succeed with, to fight and wake up with, to love and grow old with. I choose you, knowing there are still trails we must travel, knowing there are mountains left to climb. I choose you to always be by my side.

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.

Much depends on people knowing what opportunity means; it doesn’t mean a silver platter, it oftener means a spade. Self-help means something sterner than ‘help yourself’–reach over and take it.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Opinions are like asses, every body’s got one!

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.