Chuck Berry

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Man Upstairs is taking care of me.

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.'

There had to be a market in order for you to be successful in a business. The market had to need your business, or the product of it.

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.

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

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.