"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."

"Berry's On Top is probably my favorite record of all time; it defines rock and roll. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing--the push-pull and the rhythm of it."

"All of Chuck's children are out there playing his licks."

"There's only one true king of rock 'n' roll. His name is Chuck Berry."

"[My mama] said, 'You and Elvis are pretty good, but you're no Chuck Berry.'"

"To me, Chuck Berry always was the epitome of rhythm and blues playing, rock and roll playing. It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection. He is rhythm supreme. He plays that lovely double-string stuff, which I got down a long time ago, but I'm still getting the hang of. Later I realized why he played that way--because of the sheer physical size of the guy. I mean, he makes one of those big Gibsons look like a ukulele!"

"Of all the early breakthrough rock and roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers."

"While Elvis was a country boy who sang "black" to some degree ... Chuck Berry provided the mirror image where country music was filtered through an R&B sensibility."

"Well, Chuck Berry is the first singer-songwriter I know of."

"You are most certainly the inspiration for all of today's rock 'n' roll guitarists. Your music is timeless."

"Chuck Berry is a musical scientist who discovered a cure for the blues.''

"The epitome of what it is to be a rock 'n' roll guitar player, songwriter and singer."

"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?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

"Don't let the same dog bite you twice."

"Rock's so good to me. Rock is my child and my grandfather."

"Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news."

"At 78, I'm glad to be anywhere, anytime."

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

"The only Maybelline I knew was the name of a cow."

"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."

"They (black and white musicians) jived between each other. All were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever."

"One song had its birth when the tour first brought me to New Orleans, a place I'd longed to visit ever since hearing Muddy Waters's lyrics, 'Going down in Louisiana, way down behind the sun.' That inspiration, combined with little bits of Dad's stories and the thrill of seeing my black name posted all over town in one of the cities they brought the slaves through turned into the song Johnny B. Goode."