“He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell.”

You don’t just go to the studio and say, ‘I’m going to write a hit.’ It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

Rock ‘n’ roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands I went that way because I wanted a home of my own. I had a family. I had to raise them. Let’s don’t leave out the economics. No way.

Maybellene, why can’t you be true?

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, ‘Where did you get your style from?’ I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That’s the best way I could explain it.

Looking hard for a drive in, searching for a corner cafe, where the hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.

Music is an important part of our culture and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.

All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues.

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn’t paint.

My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.

Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening.

I think I see her, please let me off this bus. Nadine, honey, is that you?

Up come a flat top, he was movin’ up with me.

It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues…It’s called rock now.

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

Sometime we’ll try and reach for things we know we each want and don’t deserve.

Music is music and I think music people are the delivers, the actors, when they put their music out they want to insert their character in it. So they call it such and such so you know how they live so to speak.

Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.

Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

I learned from my father to translate: everything I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.