Chuck Berry
I'm thankful for each and every day. We never know when time is up.Collection: Thankful
I wanted to play blues. But I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters, people who really had it hard. In our house, we had food on the table. We were doing well compared to many. So I concentrated on this fun and frolic, these novelties.Collection: Food
Music is science. Everything is science. Because science is truth.Collection: Science
I'm thankful for performing as long as I am allowed.Collection: Thankful
Music should be made to make people forget their problems, if only for a short while.Collection: Music
Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two.Collection: Knowledge
It's amazing how much you can learn if your intentions are truly earnest.Collection: Amazing
If you want to release your aggression, get up and dance. That's what rock and roll is all about.
Don't let the same dog bite you twice.
In a Toyota, the cops don't think about stopping you so much.
The music played most around St. Louis was country-western and swing. Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of the country stuff on our predominantly black audience. After they laughed at me a few times, they began requesting the hillbilly stuff.
I directed my music to the teen-agers. I was 30 years old when I did 'Maybellene.' My school days had long been over when I did 'School Day,' but I was thinking of them.
If the people in the audience are talking, you're being ignored. If the people are gazing at you, you've got something they want to hear.
I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know, there are poets who don't rhyme? Shakespeare did not rhyme most of the time, and that's why I do not like him.
I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.
I made records for people who would buy them. No color, no ethnic, no political - I don't want that, never did.
Rock's so good to me. Rock is my child and my grandfather.
Charlie Christian played amplified guitar with Benny Goodman's quartet. He was the greatest guitar player that ever was. But he never looked up from the guitar. But I put a little dance to it. They appreciate seein' something along with hearin' something.
I should have been a son of Einstein.
Remember that my view, the only true view I can see with, is through the black eyes that I have.
My 12th was my most Christian and most boring year of my life. Try as I did, day after day, to cling to righteousness, I was washed down in suds of sinful surroundings.
What the heck is a king? I'm a cog in the wheel.
Praise doesn't mean anything to me. I don't judge myself.
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.
My singing days have passed. My voice is gone. My throat is worn. And my lungs are going fast.
There has been a great laziness in my soul. Lots of days I could write songs, but I could also take my $400 and play the slot machines at the riverfront casino.
The world has done nothing to me that I haven't done with the world.
My first job at Gleason's Bar in Cleveland was $800 a week, when I was making $92 a week with overtime at the automobile plant.
People don't want to see 17 pieces in neckties. They wanna see some jeans, some gettin' down, and some wigglin'.
The Rolling Stones... The Rolling Stones have a reflection to my music; I wouldn't deny it. I think that's honest.
A contract is an ask game, and if it asks for an hour, and I submit to an hour, then it's an hour. When I look at a contract, I look at the obligation - where, when, how long, the compensation. If I agree to it, that's the way it is. I have an obligation. They have an obligation.
Listening to Nat Cole prompted me to sing sentimental songs with distinct diction.
One of my realizations is that if you revel over joy, you're going to ache over pain and get killed over hurt. Your span of feelings are going to go just as far one way as the other.
My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.
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.
My father married once. I married once. This is a conviction of ours. This is the way we grew up.
You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.
Respect isn't enough. You've got to have a proprietary interest.
In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.
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.
A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song 'Yesterday.' Listen to the lyrics.
Science and religion are both the same thing. They're there; they're life. If it's not science, it's not a fact.
My dad was the cause of me being in show business. He was not only in poetry but in acting a bit. He was Mordecai in the play 'A Dream of Queen Esther.'
That's all there was in our house: poetry and choir rehearsal and duets and so forth; I listened to Dad and Mother discuss things about poetry and delivery and voice and diction - I don't think anyone could know how much it really means.
In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
It amazes me when I hear people say, 'I want to go out and find out who I am.' I always knew who I was. I was going to be famous if it killed me.
I would sing the blues if I had the blues.
That's the misconceptions that people have, that Chuck Berry went to jail. They're just totally wrong. It might have said something in the large papers in the bigger city headlines and things. But, you take a look at any of the local papers, and you will see that I was acquitted. I never went to jail.
I've written songs on everything. Menus. Napkins. Little pieces of paper.
I eat meat daily. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Arabic. What's the kind of person that doesn't eat meat? That's right - I'm not a vegetarian.