Chuck Berry Quotes

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

It's amazing how much you can learn if your intentions are truly earnest.

Don't let the same dog bite you twice.

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.

It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me.

The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

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.

Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.

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

Rock is my child and my grandfather.

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

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

I'm a millionaire, but I cut the grass. And each time I cut it, it's my grass. And that is satisfying.

Hail, hail rock and roll / Deliver me from the days of old.

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.

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

Science and religion are both the same thing. They're there; they're life. If it's not science, it's not a fact.

I would sing the blues if I had the blues.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.

Don't bother me, leave me alone. Anyway, I'm almost grown.

Prejudice doesn't make me mad. It just - I guess 'pisses me off' is the word.

When I was a kid I used to scoot under the table, and whenever company would come around you know or my sisters or parents would tell me, go under the table and I'd do it because it was entertainment for the family or aunts or whatever. And one time at the Paramount when I first did it, you know, Brooklyn Paramount, I did it in the act during an instrumental and it got a big ovation and so I coined it as one of the things I should do in the act. And since I've been doing it.

They're drinkin' home brew from a wooden cup. The folks were dancin' there got all shook up.

Praise doesn't mean anything to me. I don't judge myself.

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.

There have been so many empires, kings are kinda going out of style.

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.

This is my 1963 Ford. It was the only car I could A-Ford.

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.

Describe Elvis Presley? He was the greatest who ever was, is or ever will be.

I have so many entities now as grow older you gain responsibilities, you know, real estate, and I like video, and you know I want to live a little you know, because time is passing, its not as long as it has been.

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.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"

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.

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

All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar.

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.

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

All were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever.

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

Maybellene, why can't you be true?

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

Rock is rock, and, rock and roll, rock is just short for rock and roll.

Actually I'm writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.

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

My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, won't you play with my ding-a-ling.

You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.

Back in the class room, open your books, keep up, the teacher don't know how mean she looks.

Could you imagine the way I felt, I couldn't unfasten her safety belt. All the way home I held a grudge, for the safety belt that wouldn't budge.