Quotes & Sayings About Memphis

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 many sounds of Memphis shaped my early musical career and continue to be an inspiration to this day. — Justin Timberlake

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

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

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 love Memphis. They've been good to me, the town and everything else. And quite frankly, I love the NBA and love being involved in it. — Michael Heisley

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

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

When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate. — Valerie June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Led Zeppelin created their music from a diet of Bert Jansch, Memphis Minnie, John Fahey, Billy Fury, Phil Spector, Richard 'Rabbit' Brown, Moby Grape, Manitas De Plata and Om Kalsoum. Those who came afterwards were content with a diet of Led Zeppelin, which is not the same thing at all. — David Hepworth

I have four chickens. I have four laying hens. And I have 50 fruit trees. I make apricot and plum jam every summer. I brought Memphis to Malibu. — Linda Thompson

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

Most guys my age have girlfriends and drinking buddies on their speed dial. Me, I have the Memphis CDC. — Mira Grant

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

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

I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen. — Ronnie Milsap

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

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

I picked all the tunes before I went to Memphis, and the band was all set. Willie Mitchell is an arranger like I am, and he let me do what I had to do. — Otis Rush

Anytime I was in Memphis with my dad and at the house, I was happy. That was, like, a given. It was what I lived for. And I still feel the same excitement and warmth. — Lisa Marie Presley

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

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

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

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

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home. — Henry Rollins

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

Judging from what looks like the popularity of this classic wrestling show is that the people like what they have grown to know and love here in Memphis. — Jerry Lawler

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

Memphis found his smile. 'You know me, sir. I don't wear worry. — Libba Bray

Memphis is in a very lucky position on the map. Everything just gravitated to Memphis for years. — Steve Cropper

I tried to balance the sufferings of the miserable victim against the moral degradation of Memphis, and the truth flashed over me that in large measure the race question involves the saving of black America's body and white America's soul. — Philip Dray

In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. — Robert Reich

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

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

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

Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County. — John Grisham

I grew up Southern Baptist, so my experience was fairly conservative. Not archly so, but I think Memphis - when you get to certain parts of Memphis - are more liberal for sure. But I grew up, until I was about 13 or 14, in a section called Whitehaven, and then we moved to a suburb called Germantown - which is a pretty conservative area. — Chris Parnell

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

I'm singing the way that I love to sing, which is like old soul, like old Al Green. I grew up about an hour from Memphis. So all that music that I grew up with - the Stax music and early rhythm 'n' blues - I'm doing that. I'm actually getting out from behind my guitar and I'm singing. — Sheryl Crow

[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

The beginning of the shows are different. One time we'll say 'Hello, Denver'. Another time we'll say 'Hello, Memphis'. It's always different. — Lance Bass

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

Memphis," I said softly and he opened his eyes to look at me. "You're safe," I whispered. Tears — Sloane Kennedy

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

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

It's been a pleasure to bring my talents to south beach now on to Memphis. — Paul Pierce

I got arrested once on stage in Memphis for looking too much like Liza Minnelli. — David Johansen

The Faces do not, as some have recently alleged, play badly. They are more than competent, especially at creating a mid-Sixties Rolling Stones-styled groove, as their excellent version of 'Memphis' proves. — Jon Landau

Museums do not share their collections with other museums unless they get something in exchange. The Metropolitan will deal with the Louvre, but will they send their stuff to Memphis? No. — Eli Broad

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 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

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

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

Memphis and I both looked at Olaf, as if he'd spoken in tongues. I think neither of us had expected anything useful from the corpse fondling. Damn. — Laurell K. Hamilton

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

The first time I saw my wife, Marjorie, I was doing stand-up in Memphis, and she was sitting in the front row. Afterward, I walked up and said, 'Ma'am, I'm going to marry you one day.' And 15 years later, I did. — Steve Harvey

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

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

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

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

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

Mississippi begins in the lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee, hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico. — William Faulkner

Sycamore trees were held to be sacred in ancient Egypt and are the first trees represented in ancient art. The sycamore, also, was sacred. Peasants gather around them in rituals. In the Land of the Dead there was a sycamore in whose branches the goddess Hathor lived; she leaned out of it giving sustenance and water to deceased souls. In Memphis, Hathor's epithet was Lady of the Sycamore. — Larry Gates

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

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

I taught myself off records, Memphis Slim, them old piano players, then added to it. Yeah, hard and loud, beat it to pieces. — Pinetop Perkins

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

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 have opinions about the differences between Memphis barbecue and Texas barbecue. Put me in the kitchen and you'll see how Southern I can be. — Chris Hardwick

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

I accepted an offer to do a concert for the reopening of the Mall of Memphis. — Johnny Rivers

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

Miss Bobbit came tearing across the road, her finger wagging like a metronome; like a schoolteacher she clapped her hands, stamped her foot, said: "It is a well-known fact that gentlemen are put on the face of this earth for the protection of ladies. Do you suppose boys behave this way in towns like Memphis, New York,London, Hollywood or Paris?" The boys hung back, and shoved their hands in their pockets. Miss Bobbit helped the colored girl to her feet; she dusted her off, dried her eyes, held out a handkerchief and told her to blow. "A pretty pass," she said, "a fine situation when a lady can't walk safely in the public daylight. — Truman Capote

What's the Matter with the Mill? — Memphis Minnie

I used to go down every year for the remembrance of Elvis' birthday. Memphis State College invited me to sit in the auditorium and speak to the people for one of those Elvis days. — Otis Blackwell

Memphis are a big part of who I am, but it's still just a part — Matty Mullins

When Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Detroit caught fire. Atlanta caught fire. Los Angeles caught fire. Memphis didn't catch fire... [...] We went under curfew, tanks went up and down the streets, all of that's true. [...] ...And... The city fathers chose this opportunity to tear down a black community that represented black history... — James Luther Dickinson

My own experience with trains dates to long-ago childhood trips with my family in Mississippi to see my grandmother off at the station in Jackson, bound for Memphis. — Alan Huffman

Thus the husband is buried at Memphis and the wife in Koptos, yet the Ka of the wife goes to live in her husband's tomb — H. Rider Haggard

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

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

When working abroad you work pretty hard, but with time off, this is the greatest job in the world. You drive. You explore Memphis, or wherever you've landed, or go and see Dr John, or the Californian landscape. And, yes, I've had a few good meals. — Toby Jones

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier. — B.B. King

After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school. — Chris Parnell

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

I consider Memphis to be a cultural center, and I think that if you put a giant redneck hub in the middle of it, you're going to dilute all of that," said Christian Dalton, 20, a worker at Real 2 Reel, an art gallery on the hip South Main Street. "But I think it's better than having a giant empty paperweight downtown. — Anonymous

Memphis cupped her cheek in his hand and put his mouth on hers. Theta had never been kissed the way Memphis was kissing her now. There had been fumbling boys thrumming with nervous want. There had been theater owners, older "uncles" who pawed at her when she walked past or who wanted to "inspect" her costume to make sure it was decent down to the undergarments, men she granted the occasional kiss in order to stave off something worse. And there was Roy, of course. Beautiful, cruel Roy, whose kisses were declaratory, as if he needed to conquer Theta, to brand her with his mouth. Those men had never really seen Theta. But Memphis's kiss was nothing like theirs. It was passionate, yet tender. A mutual agreement of desire. It was a kiss shared. He was kissing her. He was with her. — Libba Bray

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

Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming ... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it. — William Bell

It was special with me being from Memphis and knowing the history of the venue, knowing all of the artists who performed in the Orpheum before me. Even having the idea to approach it was ambitious on my part, but I thought they would turn me down at first. — Yo Gotti

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