You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTONThere is no art without intention.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
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My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of – or reincarnated from – royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
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There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed.
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON