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"  A prostitute is a poor thing to put confidence in. There was ten of us, five boys and five girls, and Mom and Dad made twelve people in one house, a little two-bedroom. Daddy couldn&amp;#039;t buy everybody shoes at one time, so somebody&amp;#039;s getting hand-me-downs. That&amp;#039;s me.  I didn&amp;#039;t have a mother; I had a mama. I measure other women by the stature of my mama.  Daddy used to go to the honky-tonk bars and leave me in the truck. After a while, he&amp;#039;d come out staggering and slurring, &amp;quot;Now, don&amp;#039;t you tell your mama what I did, boy.&amp;quot; He was so drunk, I wouldn&amp;#039;t have to say anything. Everything is handed to society now. Before, you had to dig for it. I like that -- digging for it.  What if she takes your heart and wraps it around her little finger and has you going to the store, shopping, washing clothes, and then she breaks your heart? That&amp;#039;s the chance you&amp;#039;ve got to take on love. I was at a neighbor&amp;#039;s house when I was about thirteen. People brought them something wrapped tight in paper, something to do with some spoon. Everybody was laughing; they&amp;#039;d go in sad and come out happy. So one of the guys said, &amp;quot;Hey, let li&amp;#039;l Green have some. He&amp;#039;s a nice kid.&amp;quot; So he got this syringe ready, and I said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know, I&amp;#039;m scared of needles. I can&amp;#039;t do that,&amp;quot; and I ran out of the house. They all fell out laughing. I was a fantastic womanizer. I mean, I was incredible. I just didn&amp;#039;t know what I was doing. I had women all over the place, they were all over me, and my dad said, &amp;quot;Well, why don&amp;#039;t you just choose one?&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t know what bad music is if it&amp;#039;s done right, but then again, I don&amp;#039;t know what good music is if it&amp;#039;s done wrong. A man&amp;#039;s gift makes room for him. Blacks have based their feelings on &amp;quot;What happened to me, being a slave on the plantation, da da da,&amp;quot; and that&amp;#039;s fine and dandy. But I could go to my friend Henry, who&amp;#039;s Jewish, and say, &amp;quot;What happened to you?&amp;quot; And he&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;My grandparents died in the Holocaust.&amp;quot; So that stuff happened to everybody.  Look at you. The chains you had on. Now they&amp;#039;re gold.  You can&amp;#039;t sleep all day and get up at 4:00 in the evening and pretend you&amp;#039;re in a hurry. The trick to achieving a good falsetto? I know no way to accomplish that. I don&amp;#039;t even know how I sing like I sing.  Church is so important for black people because it&amp;#039;s the only place we had to go when we couldn&amp;#039;t go no place else. Couldn&amp;#039;t go to the bar -- wasn&amp;#039;t allowed. Couldn&amp;#039;t go to the hotel because we weren&amp;#039;t able to rent a room. Couldn&amp;#039;t go to the restaurant because we weren&amp;#039;t allowed to be seated. So we went to church. If there wasn&amp;#039;t a hell, nobody could tell me to go there.  Seeing that I ain&amp;#039;t never died, I can&amp;#039;t be afraid of something I never did. I woke up about 4:30 in the morning. Something was happening. I was knocking on doors of the hotel, telling complete strangers I&amp;#039;d been born again. Some lady slammed the door in my face. I went to the next door and said, &amp;quot;I been born again!&amp;quot; They called security.  I think God chose to speak to me because I&amp;#039;m softhearted and he knew that I would be dumb enough to actually try. My daddy said, &amp;quot;When the sun comes up, boy, you get up. When the sun go down, dammit, you go down.&amp;quot; I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that&amp;#039;ll give you the shirt off their back. And I&amp;#039;ve also found people that won&amp;#039;t give you a piece of bread if you&amp;#039;re starving to death.  Some people believe that fairness comes with obeying the rules. I&amp;#039;m one of those people. You&amp;#039;ll find that there&amp;#039;s somebody along the way who will give you a ride wherever you want to go. I saw a tree standing that wouldn&amp;#039;t sway with the wind. It stayed still. But one day a hurricane came and ripped it. The woman had water or something in this pot. I said, &amp;quot;Mary, you gonna heat water or something?&amp;quot; She said, &amp;quot;I would never hurt you. I love you.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Hurt me!! I just wrote a song for you!&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s the furthest thing from my mind. I go back downstairs, I disrobe, I&amp;#039;m washing my face, and I feel this excruciating pain, and water or something flies all over the place. I get in the shower, cold water, and I&amp;#039;m screaming, and the next thing I hear is a shot fired and someone hit the floor. I loved her. I thought we could be together forever. She didn&amp;#039;t mean it. I didn&amp;#039;t know she had a problem.  Suicide is not an answer, it&amp;#039;s destruction. If I fast for forty days, I can go more places sitting right here on this couch than you could go in a jet plane. The greatest thing that ever happened to me, to Al Green, the little boy from Arkansas, was that amidst all the doubts and speculation, I found peace. Published in the September 2001 issue "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a484/al-green-0901/>