On childhood: When I was a kid, I didn’t know what happy was; I was just interested. I wanted to know about things, tear them apart. Sometimes that was naughty. But…after it got tore up, I’d put it back together.
On success: I was the first child in the family to own a Cadillac, the first to have a formal wedding, the first to fly to Europe, first to earn a half-million dollars, and the first one to admit I was wrong.
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On celebrity: I’m just me, not always doing my duck walk or picking guitar. I sit and think, cry, freak out, or just plain do nothing… I was not and will never be one who can come to accept the honor or gratitude that is forwarded from those who see in me that which is only an image they conceive.
On tax evasion: My philosophy of “as long as you know you have it why bother where it is” was proving to be incompatible with reality.
On his midlife physical exam: Over fifty years of changes and chance, and there was little that had need of attention other than the need for some attention.
On singing: Nat King Cole had diction. I still say his diction was better ’n Blue Eyes’. Nat came at the wrong time; Nat was under Blue Eyes like I was under Presley.
On performing: I can work with a symphony orchestra, a jazz orchestra, a school band. It’s just if they know music just as well as I do. Which is only from a magazine that had the guitar chords printed. I put my hands where the dots were and came along from there… If it wasn’t for the feeling I get while performing, I think it would have been impossible for me to have continued as long as I have. It is also difficult for me to conceive what on earth people see in my act that has caused it to linger as long as it has.
On joy: The greatest highs I’ve ever had in life have come from a mob of as many as sixty-two thousand voices, and also from the moan of one.
On rock ’n’ roll’s origins: [It was] like four or five avenues rolling toward one another… Rock ’n’ roll is music. That’s my one-word answer. It’s a mixture of a lot of music, like bluegrass. It fades into this and fades into that. Most people’s impressions overlap other people’s impressions, and music is like that, too.
See also: “A Conversation with Chuck Berry”
