B. B. King

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

I learned another thing from the hurt my cousin gave me – never to give that kind of hurt to anyone else. My revenge was to change a bad feeling into a good one. If I’m working with you and I sense you’re feeling a little insecure, I try to make you feel great. That’s how I get rid of my old hurt. If I don’t do that, my hurt grows and makes me mean and vengeful. But if hurt can change to kindness – that’s something Mama showed me – the world becomes a little less cruel.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

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

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 could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

When I’m happier and healthier, my family is happier and healthier, and it affects how I interact with my friends and the people I work with.

People say: “Oh yeah, jobs for the boys”. I wish. You’ve got to fight even harder with a family like mine.

I’ve always wanted to be a mom at 23, 24ish, ever since I was a little girl. I’m right on schedule.

There was a lot of charm in just living in a big family compound of a house. My two uncles, who were into jazz, lived in the basement, and one of them, Uncle Peter, taught me my first songs on the ukulele.

It’s her first grandchild, so she’s really, really, really excited. I guess my mom is a little more stressed out than me.

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.

I believed in raising my children as I had been raised.

I know what it’s like to be married and to live in a house with a garden, but it’s not something I’m striving for at the moment.

I guess my parents were strict. There were a few times when being with my friends and had bring my sister. It was just my parents best interests.

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that’s meant a life of one-nighters.

Nothing can stop me from loving my brother.

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

Siblings – the definition that comprises love, strife, competition and forever friends.

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.