Memphis Quotes

I hitchhiked, took trucks 'n' trains - anything that would pick me up. I stopped in Memphis for about six months and they found me and come got me. Stayed about a month an' split again. ~ John Lee Hooker

When I went to Memphis and Mississippi and Nashville, I learnt the blues is a whole way of life. I don't really have the blues, but I can appreciate the honesty and the simplicity of it. ~ Gin Wigmore

F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at the moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who's suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he'll make it. ~ John Grisham

Theta sat next to Memphis and watched Mr. and Mrs. Chan laughing about some private joke. They were a mixed couple, and they were happy. No one seemed to be bothering them. But they were also here in the few blocks of Chinatown. What happened when they crossed Canal Street into the rest of the city? What happened when they went out into the rest of the country? ~ Libba Bray

Look behind you now.
Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen?
... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights heading toward Memphis.
... Perhaps this is the moment that Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, arrives in the same city in search for Allie, only to find that he has no idea where to look.
... Perhaps this is the very instant that a monster called the McGill arrives there as well, aching to ease his pain by sharing his misery - not only with his new minions, but with anyone he can.
... And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the covergence of the wrong, of the right, and the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep ... For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of doubt, which is which. ~ Neal Shusterman

Walking in Memphis, I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale. Walking in Memphis, but do I really feel the way I feel? ~ Marc Cohn

When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to ! ~ Richard Betts

The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around ... But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.' ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember. ~ Alex Chilton

Wig Out At Jagbags is inspired by Cologne, Germany, Mark Von Schlegell, Rosemarie Trockel, Von Spar and Jan Lankisch, Can and Gas; Stephen-Malkmus-imagined Weezer/Chili Peppers, Sic Alps, UVA in the late 80's, NYRB, Aroma Charlottenburg, inactivity, Jamming, Indie guys trying to sound Memphis, Flipper, Pete Townshend, Pavement, The Joggers, The NBA and home life in the 2010's ... ~ Stephen Malkmus

Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street. ~ Muddy Waters

My parents were working in a hospital in Memphis. But I didn't live there for any length of time that I remember. The first thing I remember is the town in Mississippi that I live in now, Charleston. ~ Morgan Freeman

They come into white people's lives like that in sudden sharp black trickles that isolate white facts for an instant in unarguable truth like under a microscope; the rest of the time just voices that laugh when you see nothing to laugh at, tears when no reason for tears. They will bet on the odd or even number of mourners at a funeral. A brothel full of them in Memphis went into a religious trance ran naked into the street. It took three policemen to subdue one of them. Yes Jesus O good man Jesus O that good man. The ~ William Faulkner

The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. ~ Ida B. Wells

I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music ... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto. ~ Robbie Robertson

No, I always hated modeling. I developed an early hatred of modeling just from having to do it; having won Miss Teenage Memphis, I had to model, and I hated it. It bored me. ~ Cybill Shepherd

Hapi?" I asked.
"Why, yes, I am happy!" Hapi beamed. "I'm always happy because I'm Hapi! Are you happy?"
Zia frowned up at the giant. "Does he have to be so big?"
The god laughed. Immediately he shrank down to human size, though the crazy cheerful look on his face was still pretty unnerving.
"Oh, Setne!" Hapi chuckled and pushed the ghost playfully. "I hate this guy. Absolutely despise him!"
Hapi's smile became painfully wide. "I'd love to rip off your arms and legs, Setne. That would be amazing!"
Setne ... drifted a little farther away from the smiling god.
"Oh!" Hapi clapped excitedly. "The world is going to end tomorrow. I forgot!"
"You'd never get to Memphis without my help. You'd get torn into a million pieces!"
He seemed genuinely pleased to share that news. ~ Rick Riordan

I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing. ~ Charles Lloyd

ELVIS PRESLEY was bigger than life. His success was documented and laid out for him. He came to the first show I had in Memphis, and it was very nice. He sort of treated me like an equal, because we were both fresh in the business. We got to be great friends and kindred souls. ~ Roy Orbison

Everyone went and had some turkey and cornbread dressing, and hot biscuits, and mashed potatoes running with butter, and when they prayed, they thanked God for the good fortune that had found their boy, who had sense enough to know that if you're going to be hit by a train, you have to go stand on the tracks in Memphis, Tennessee. Amen. ~ Rick Bragg

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood. ~ Ira Sachs

Memphis held onto me until I was far enough along in my art and then it let me go. ~ Valerie June

Dear Trixie,
Will you come to Memphis with me?
A) Yes
B) No
C) I'd go anywhere with you because you fuck like a goddamn fire hose.
D) You're an asshole and I never want to see you again.
Circle ONLY ONE and give it back to me when you're done eating.
Love, J ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Facinating." He broke into a wide grin. "I've discovered something, Khufu. This is not Memphis, Egypt."
Khufu gave me a sideways look, and I could swear his expression meant, Duh.
"I've also discovered a new form of magic called blues music," the man continued. "And barbecue. Yes, you must try barbecue. ~ Rick Riordan

When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis. ~ Elvis Presley

Life is an ear of buttered corn waiting to get stuck in your teeth. ~ Truant D. Memphis

Sam smirked. "You have a favorite librarian?"
"You've got a favorite speakeasy, don'tcha?" Memphis shot back. ~ Libba Bray

It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me. ~ Fannie Flagg

Most studios in Memphis had a house set of drums; the drummers just brought their own sticks. ~ Steve Cropper

All the really great records or people who made them somehow came from Memphis or Louisiana or somewhere along the Mississippi River ... And singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters gave me the feeling that they were right there, standing by the river. ~ John Fogerty

Many cities make music, but no city breathes music quite like Memphis. The songs and sounds that come from here are uniquely American. ~ Shawn Amos

Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.

I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop th ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I don't know enough about hip-hop, though I've heard some great hip-hop. I just did a thing with Qwest Love - we did a performance together in Memphis at the Folk Alliance Festival, and we had a great jam and a conversation. ~ Bela Fleck

Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York. ~ Ira Sachs

The Labor Department's Hall of Honor recognizes men and women - like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike - who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers. ~ Thomas Perez

Hey, I said we don't carry weapons, I didn't say we couldn't defend ourselves." Captain Stanley Memphis, head of alien team disguised as pint-sized critters on a quest to learn if humans are savage bastards or a benevolent tribe. ~ Delilah Jean Williams

I find it deeply upsetting when I see justice not being served. How do we as human beings deal with the unknown? The West Memphis Three trial is a joke on so many different levels. ~ Atom Egoyan

At fourteen he runs away. He will not see again the freezing kitchenhouse in the predawn dark. The firewood, the washpots. He wanders west as far as Memphis, a solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral landscape. Blacks in the fields, lank and stooped, their fingers spiderlike among the bolls of cotton. A shadowed agony in the garden. Against the sun's declining figures moving in the slower dusk across a paper skyline. A lone dark husbandman pursuing mule and harrow down the rainblown bottomland toward night. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Sergio Trujillos choreography adds coals to the inferno, with movement that plain just doesnt stop. We know from Jersey Boys that he can capture this style, but in Memphis, he kicks it up towards art, playing with the authentic touches to add some hits of Fosse, or riffs from modern dance that take us just that extra step we need. ~ Richard Ouzounian

While he was writing the novel he received an invitation from the American University in Cairo, asking him to come and talk to their students. They said they couldn't pay him much but they could, if he were interested, arrange for him to take a boat up the Nile for a few days in the company of one of their leading Egyptologists. To see the world of ancient Egypt was one of his great unfulfilled dreams and he wrote back quickly. "If I could just finish my novel and arrange to come after that, that would be best," he suggested. Then he finished the novel,and it was The Satanic Verses, and a trip to Egypt became impossible, and he had to accept that he might never see the Pyramids, or Memphis, or Luxor, or Thebes, or Abu Simbel. It was one of the many futures he would lose. ~ Salman Rushdie

The support this city and our fans have shown the Grizzlies made my decision to stay in Memphis an easy one. Memphis deserves a championship team, and I am committed to that. ~ Jerry West

I love the South. Although I grew up primarily in Memphis, my family moved around a ton when I was a kid. I guess I never stayed in one place long enough to pick up the accent, but I definitely identify as a Southerner. ~ Chris Hardwick

I knowed Lancey from back yonder. I see him to Nig's in Memphis and down to Yeller's in Noorlins, back yonder when they was shunting booze into the country. Him. Sheet! Nothing but a comer like you, Kid, only he liked wimmen too. Always got to feel a leg, that's the kind he is. Oooeeeh! That sonsabitch is cold. I seen him gut a feller with a furth card and rattle him s'bad, the feller quit and got up and pissed red in the john and went square. They ain't but one way to ferk with the kind of man Lancey Hodges is... ~ Richard Jessup

It was funny how their odd little family of friends had changed him. Made him feel safe. Theta, Memphis, Henry, Jericho, Mabel, Ling, Isaiah, and especially Evie. They'd been there for him. Opened the parts of him he was afraid would be closed off forever. Why had he wasted so much time bottling up his feelings? What did that ever get anybody but dumb fights? He had friends. He had a home in them. And Evie was home, too. ~ Libba Bray

Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service. ~ Shawn Amos

I get called 'Memphis Eve,' but my first name is Eve. I know Memphis is in there somewhere, but on my passport I'm 'Eve Sunny Day Hewson.' ~ Eve Hewson

'Hurt Village' is based on a real housing project in Memphis, about three minutes away from the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated, so in my work I'm focusing on a very specific area in Memphis. I see 'Hurt Village' as a natural extension of 'The Mountaintop.' ~ Katori Hall

I could not see myself going back into the studio without Tommy Dowd, our beloved producer who passed away in 2002. Then in 2009, Michael Lehman, my manager, really pushed me to meet with T Bone Burnett. I ended up meeting with T Bone in Memphis, and we hit it off right away; I knew he was a guy I could work with. ~ Gregg Allman

She would go to Memphis and this was after our divorce. And I would send her to Memphis to be with him. ~ Priscilla Presley

I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is. ~ Juicy J

Case had always taken it for granted that the real bosses, the kingpins in a given industry, would be both more and less than people ... He'd seen it in the men who'd crippled him in Memphis, he'd seen Wage affect the semblance of it in Night City, and it had allowed him to accept Armitrage's flatness and lack of feeling. He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism. It was the root of street cool, too, the knowing posture that implied connection, invisible lines up to hidden levels of influence. ~ William Gibson

God bless the boys from Memphis, blue suede shoes, and Elvis. ~ George Jones

I love Memphis, I guess you could say, in the way that you love a brother even if he does sometimes puzzle and sadden and frustrate you. Say what you want about it, it's an authentic place. I was born and raised in Memphis, and no matter where I go, Memphis belongs to me, and I to it. ~ Hampton Sides

I try to think about Elvis, Memphis, Oprah in the afternoon. ~ Patty Loveless

In 1930 the price of cotton dropped. And so, in the spring of 1931, Papa set out looking for work, going as far north as Memphis and as far south as the Delta country. He had gone west too, into Louisiana. It was there he found work laying track for the railroad. He worked the remainder of the year away from us, not returning until the deep winter when the ground was cold and barren. The following spring after the planting was finished, he did the same. Now it was 1933, and Papa was again in Louisiana laying track. I ~ Mildred D. Taylor

I like New Orleans music, I like Memphis music and I like the way that the sound like those places. I like how there are stars and there are people in those cities that are revered in the community. ~ Joel Plaskett

The Voice of Tomorrow
America, America, will you listen to the story of you?
You bruised mountains, purpled by majesty.
You shining seas that refuse to see.
You, haunted by ghosts of dreams,
From the many, one; the one, many.
I am in you and of you, America.
You of amber waving grain, shining
Like fool's gold in a plentiful river.
I am the dream coming, yes,
The Voice of Tomorrow
Ringing in freedom's ear.
Do you hear it now?
Calling, calling, all:
Listen, America -
I am the story.
I am you.
I am. ~ Libba Bray

I think it is good for people who are incarcerated or who are bound up one way or the other-people like Lily Kimball and all the prostitues of Memphis. This gal, she needs some wings, and a good song can make that happen. ~ Ketch Secor

In a little while they were kissing. In a little while longer, they made their slow sweet love.
The iron bed sounded like a pine forest in an ice storm, like a switch track in a Memphis trainyard, like the sweet electrical thunder of habitual love and the tragical history of the constant heart. Auntee finished first, and then Uncle soon after, and their lips were touching lightly as they did.
The rain was still falling and the scritch owl was still asleep and the dragonflies were hidden like jewels somewhere in deep brown wet grasses, nobody knew where.
Uncle rolled away from his wife and held onto her hand, never let it go, old friend, old partner, passionate wife. ~ Lewis Nordan

when he finally tried to kissed me after all this time, i denied him. he took too long, and she left him. ~ Memphis

I remember the first time I saw you," Allie said.
"I thought you smelled me first."
"Right," said Allie. "The chocolate. But then I saw you as I sat up in the dead forest, thinking I knew you. At the time, I thought I must have seen you through the windshield when our cars crashed…. But that wasn't it. I think, way back then, I was seeing you as you are now. Isn't that funny?"
"Not as funny as the way I always complained, and the way you always bossed me around!"
They embraced and held each other for a long time.
"Don't forget me," Nick said. "No matter where your life goes, no matter how old you get. And if you ever get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder, but there's nobody there, maybe it'll be me."
"I'll write to you," said Allie, and Nick laughed. "No really. I'll write the letter then burn it, and if I care just enough it will cross into Everlost."
"And," added Nick, "it will show up as a dead letter at that the post office Milos made cross into San Antonio!"
Allie could have stood there saying good-bye forever, because it was more than Nick she was saying good-bye to. She was leaving behind four years of half-life in a world that was both stunningly beautiful, and hauntingly dark. And she was saying good-bye to Mikey. I'll be waiting for you, he had said…. Well, if he was, maybe she wasn't saying good-bye at all.
Nick hefted the backpack on his shoulder. "Shouldn't you be heading off to Memphis?" he said. ~ Neal Shusterman

In March 1955, Powell called for a boycott of Harlem savings banks that "practice 'Jim Crow-ism' and 'economic lynching.'" He urged Abyssinian Baptist Church's fifteen thousand members to withdraw their funds from white-woned banks and transfer them to either the black-owned Carver Federal Savings in Harlem or the black-owned Tri-State Bank in Memphis, Tennessee (108). ~ Manning Marable

All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,
is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I feel a lot of cities are like, you go and you are trying to do your art, and there are so many other artists there who are so brilliant. And it's kind of like they stomp on the scene, and they are like, "You're not already Picasso? Get the hell out of here!" And Memphis is like, "Well, you'll get there one day!" ~ Valerie June

What happened? Stan repeats.
To us?
To the country?
What happened when childhood ends in Dealey Plaza, in Memphis, in the kitchen of the Ambassador, your belief your hope your trust lying in a pool of blood again? Fifty-five thousand of your brothers dead in Vietnam, a million Vietnamese, photos of naked napalmed children running down a dirt road, Kent State, Soviet tanks roll into Prague so you turn on drop out you know you can't reinvent the country but maybe you reimagine yourself you believe you really believe that you can that you can create a world of your own and then you lower that expectation to just a piece of ground to make a stand on but then you learn that piece of ground costs money that you don't have.
What happened?
Altamont, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate, Son of Sam, Mark Chapman we saw a dream turn into a nightmare we saw love and peace turn into endless war and violence our idealism into realism our realism into cynicism our cynicism into apathy our apathy into selfishness our selfishness into greed and then greed was good and we
Had babies, Ben, we had you and we had hopes but we also had fears we created nests that became bunkers we made our houses baby-safe and we bought car seats and organic apple juice and hired multilingual nannies and paid tuition to private schools out of love but also out of fear.
What happened?
You start by trying to create a new world and then you find yourself just wanting to add a b ~ Don Winslow

Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along. ~ John Fogerty

Memphis can be thought of connected as much to Mississippi and Arkansas as it is to Tennessee, if not more so. William Faulkner once observed that Mississippi extends from a Memphis hotel room to the Gulf of Mexico. ~ Tav Falco

A friend of mine took me to Memphis advised me that I should get in the musicians' union. He gave me a set of drums and said, Stay on the job, son. ~ Levon Helm

They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. ~ William Gibson

I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat. ~ Mac Davis

There were railroads in the wilderness now; people who used to go overland by carriage or horseback to the River landings for the Memphis and New Orleans steamboats could take the train from almost anywhere now. And presently Pullmans too, all the way from Chicago and the Northern cities and the Northern money, the Yankee dollars arriving between sheets and even in drawing rooms to open the wilderness, nudge it further and further toward obsolescence with the whine of saws; what had been one vast unbroken virgin span was now booming with cotton and timber both. Or rather, booming with simple money: increment's troglodyte which had fathered twin ones: solvency and bankruptcy, the three of them booming money into the land so fast now that the problem was to get rid of it before it whelmed you into strangulation. ~ William Faulkner

What will people say, you running off to Memphis like you don't have a house to look after?
Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.
Well, say Grady, trying to bring light. A woman can't git a man if peoples talk.
Shug look at me and us giggle. Then us sure nuff. Then Squeak start to laugh. Then Sofia. All us laugh and laugh. ~ Alice Walker

I was born in Memphis. There was music all around me, really deep and special music. I heard all these great masters at a young age.There was a great genius in my town, Phineas Newborn, who is one of the greatest pianists ever on the planet. He took me under his wings at about 9 and he put me on the right track. ~ Charles Lloyd

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don't know why-the lyrics had no meaning. ~ Elvis Presley

God chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career. ~ Allen Iverson

I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the schoolbus for two hours. But to drive through America and see the backroads, from Nashville to Memphis, Lovick to New Mexico, was incredible. It was probably the greatest trip of my life. ~ Garrett Hedlund

From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds blowI been in some big towns an' heard me some big talk, but there is one thing I knowA woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night. ~ Johnny Mercer

I've made it clear for some time if somebody came up with the right offer, I'd consider selling the team. It wasn't a secret in Memphis or, really, around the country. ~ Michael Heisley

The man on the radio says Elvis Presley's died. We drove to Memphis, the sky was hard and black. ~ Bruce Springsteen

He would return again and again to the same themes over the years, with different details and different emphases, but always with the same underlying message: the inherent nobility not so much of man as of FREEDOM, and the implied responsibility - no, the OBLIGATION - for each of us to be as different as our individuated natures allowed us to be. To be different, in Sam's words, IN THE EXTREME. ~ Peter Guralnick

[William] Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekend he searches for the ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation. ~ Geoff Dyer

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. ~ Frank Portman

I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music. ~ Mark Billingham

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station. ~ Johnny Cash

He calls us to run hard after Him, His commands, and His glory. The decision to be in God's will is not the choice between Memphis or Fargo or engineering or art; it's the daily decision we face to seek God's kingdom or ours, submit to His lordship or not, live according to His rules or our own. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Alliteration. It's when you repeat the same consonant in a phrase," Memphis explained. "Huh. I was hoping it was something dirty. ~ Libba Bray

LAURENE POWELL. Savvy and good-humored Penn graduate, went to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford Business School, married Steve Jobs in 1991. GEORGE RILEY. Jobs's Memphis-born friend and lawyer. ARTHUR ROCK. Legendary tech investor, early Apple board member, Jobs's father figure. JONATHAN "RUBY" RUBINSTEIN. Worked ~ Walter Isaacson

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! ~ Elizabeth Stuckey-French

The thing about Memphis is that it's pleasingly off-kilter. It's a great big whack job of a city. The anti-Atlanta. You go there, and you can't believe the things people will say, the way they think, the wobbling orbits of their lives. There's an essential otherness. ~ Hampton Sides

What would we say if the Chinese sent a gunboat with their marines up the Mississippi River claiming they were protecting their laundries in Memphis? ~ Will Rogers

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues. ~ Ian Gillan

The blues ain't nothin' but a botheration on your mind. ~ Memphis Slim

I remember one night in Memphis, I'd come out of a blackout, and I didn't know where I was. I'm feeling through the darkness - I was asleep in the middle of a freeway. I went up to this car in the darkness, and it was a cop car. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I used to play - when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey. ~ B.B. King

Memphis - it's just a bird. Birds fly around, brother. It's what they do. It's not following you, and it's not a sign. Unless you really did give it candy and flowers, in which case you are one strange brother. ~ Libba Bray

Fields and more fields on either side of the road.From where they are it looks as if the whole world were green.But from higher up,from a hill-if there were a hill in this flat country-or from a pyramid(one of the many that two thousand years ago lined this route from Thebes to Memphis,from the Delta to the Cataract)or from an aeroplane today,you would be able to see how narrow the strip green was,how closely it clung to the winding river.The river like a lifeline thrown across the desert, the villages and the town hanging on to it, clustering together, glancing over their shoulders at the desert always behind them.Appeasing it,finally,by making it the dwelling of their head. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

Reagan Truman's cell phone clamored in the darkness. It took several rings to find it.
"Hello," she mumbled, hoping she didn't wake her uncle in the next room.
"Rea, this is Noah."
"It's late, Noah." She pulled she string on an old Tiffany-style lamp that was probably five times her age. Something was wrong; not even Noah called this late.
"I know, Rea. But I need to talk to you."
She shoved her hair out of her face and tried to force sleep away. "All right, what's up?"
"I'm in the hospital, Rea. I was hurt tonight in Memphis."
"How bad?" she laughed nervously. She'd almost asked if he was still alive. There was a long pause on the line. "I don't know. Bad. Broken arm, two ribs, but it's my back that has me worried." He didn't speak for a moment. When he began again, he sounded more like a frightened boy than a man of twenty. "I'm hurt bad enough to maybe kick me off the circuit. When I hit the dirt, I was out cold. They said I kept yelling your name in the ambulance, but I don't remember. All I remember is the pain."
"Noah, what can I do? Do you want me to go over to your folk's house? I think they're in town. I could call your sister, Alex."
"No, I don't want them to worry. I know mom. She'll freak out and dad will start lecturing me like I'm still a kid. I don't want them to know anything until I know how serious it is. They're still not telling me much yet." He paused, and she knew he was fighting to keep his voice calm. "Rea, ~ Jodi Thomas

Growing up in Memphis, I have always admired St. Jude's for the magnificent work they do. ~ Ginnifer Goodwin

I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say. ~ Justin Timberlake

I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas, and he would play the blues. ~ Koko Taylor