These Memphis quotes will inspire you. Memphis is a city along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, Tennessee, United States.
Its 2020 population was 633,104, making it Tennessee’s second-most populous city behind Nashville, the nation’s 28th-largest, and the largest city proper situated along the Mississippi River.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Memphis quotes, Memphis sayings, and Memphis proverbs.
Best Memphis Quotes
- “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
- “God bless the boys from Memphis, blue suede shoes, and Elvis.” ~ George Jones
- “Memphis is in a very lucky position on the map. Everything just gravitated to Memphis for years.” ~ Steve Cropper
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“I’ll stay in Memphis.” ~ Elvis Presley
- “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
- “When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis.” ~ Elvis Presley
- “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
- “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
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“I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say.” ~ Justin Timberlake
- “I was always drawn to the roots music, bluegrass, blues, early rock – Sun Records, Elvis [Presley]. And I still love that music to this day. Memphis never gets the credit. It’s much more musically rich than Nashville ever will be. Nashville manufactured that hokey-hillbilly image way back.” ~ Steve Young
- “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
- “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
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“The many sounds of Memphis shaped my early musical career and continue to be an inspiration to this day.” ~ Justin Timberlake
- “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
- “When I came out of the military, I had a club in Memphis and I started using The Bar-Kays as my club band. They were still only in the middle school – but I’d take them on the road with me on the weekends, sometimes.” ~ William Bell
- “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
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“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
- “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
- “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 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
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“She would go to Memphis and this was after our divorce. And I would send her to Memphis to be with him.” ~ Priscilla Presley
- “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 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
- “I’d been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.” ~ Elvis Costello
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“Most studios in Memphis had a house set of drums; the drummers just brought their own sticks.” ~ Steve Cropper
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Growing up in Memphis, I have always admired St. Jude’s for the magnificent work they do.” ~ Ginnifer Goodwin
- “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
- “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 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
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“When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental “Memphis” I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !” ~ Richard Betts
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Mississippi begins in a lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico” ~ William Faulkner
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.” ~ Libba Bray
- “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
- “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.
- “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
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“God chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career.” ~ Allen Iverson
- “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
- “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
- “[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
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“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
- “From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds blow I been in some big towns an’ heard me some big talk, but there is one thing I know a woman’s a two-face, a worrisome thing who’ll leave ya to sing the blues in the night.” ~ Johnny Mercer
- “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 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
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“No such thing as a hard woman, Memphis,just soft men. With that, I turned, and the others followed me.” ~ Laurell K. Hamilton
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“It’s been a pleasure to bring my talents to south beach now on to Memphis.” ~ Paul Pierce
- “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
- “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
- “Memphis found his smile. ‘You know me, sir. I don’t wear worry.” ~ Libba Bray
- “I love Motown, but I’ve obviously always been more of a Memphis soul fan. If it’s Stax or Motown, I go Stax.” ~ Justin Townes Earle
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“I’ve got a reason to believe we all be received in Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee.” ~ Paul Simon
- “The man on the radio says Elvis Presley’s died. We drove to Memphis, the sky was hard and black.” ~ Bruce Springsteen
- “Most guys my age have girlfriends and drinking buddies on their speed dial. Me, I have the Memphis CDC.” ~ Mira Grant
- “I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the school bus 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
