Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen.
— Little Richard
I've never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they'd just give me a bunch of words, I'd make up a song! The rhythm and everything. 'Good Golly Miss Molly'! And I didn't get a dime for it.
I think my legacy should be that when I started in show business, there wasn't no such thing as rock n' roll. When I started with 'Tutti Frutti,' that's when rock really started rocking.
I look back on my life, comin' out of Macon, Georgia - I never thought I'd be a superstar, a living legend. I never heard of no rock and roll in my life.
To me, true rock 'n' roll has a lot of bottom in it.
Plus I love Tanya Tucker and I love country music.
Like, my mother would have company over, and I would sing so they'd pay attention to me.
I've never seen the devil create music.
I would wear flamboyant clothes and long hair, and most singers at the time didn't.
I try to be a guide for people, to make their darkness bright and to make the pathway light, and never to condemn or control or criticize.
I think that a man should be caring.
I thank God for making me a man.
I never accepted the idea that I had to be guided by some pattern or blueprint.
I just want the world to know that God is present, that he's alive for ever more.
I don't give the devil credit for creating nothing.
I also think that what's wrong with all of us is that we don't show enough love toward each other.
God is omnipotent, He is omniscient, and He is ever present.
I am the architect of rock n' roll. I have to be a fan of all its forms.
People called rock & roll 'African music.' They called it 'voodoo music.' They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan - the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.
It's hard to have a friend when your name's a household word.
My mother died, and I couldn't stand to look at her bedroom any more. I'd get sick. I've always been a momma's boy.
Some situations you cause yourself.
Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.
It was a way out of poverty. It was a way to success. It was a way to education. And it was a way to a brighter day for me.
I'm very much a gentleman in what I do.
I was really kind of shy as a child. But I would do things for attention.
I tried to look presentable for a show, but not for sexual attraction. It was strictly for show business.
I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?
I only wore makeup when I went onstage.
I love God, and I'm a follower.
I don't think that you have to be effeminate to be sensitive.
I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.
I also like the banging piano - that old good-time piano.
But when I went on the stage to do a show, I would put on makeup because I felt that it enhanced my act; it drew attention to what I was doing.
I'm a conductor of revivals. The only minister in the whole package. Little Richard, the evangelist.
A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true.
Black people lived right by the railroad tracks, and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy, and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that.
When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.
Rock 'n' roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters - twelve children.
No, I've never truly been a minister.
If I had my life to live over, I would want to be a man.
I'm here to sing.
I was always my own person.
I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.
I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.
I never heard nobody in my audience call me any kind of names.
I let people know that it was all right to do the kinds of things I did.
I don't think a woman has to act like a man to show that she has strength.
I always knew I was a man, always felt that I was a man, always wanted to be a man.
Greed has taken the whole universe, and nobody is worried about their soul.
