“And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.”

When you sing, always tell the truth.

All dope can do for you is kill you… the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.

I can only sing songs my way. I don’t know any other way.

Singing songs like ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

God has blessed you when he lets you believe in somebody.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

I never sing a song the same way twice.

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.

If nobody can learn from the past, then there’s no point in raking it up.

I joined Count Basie’s band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn’t see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

In this country kings or dukes don’t amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.

Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.

Them that’s got shall get, Them that’s not shall lose. So the Bible says, And it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that’s got his own.

I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.

If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.

Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.

Then hold fast to whichever faith appeals to you.

Assassination’s the fastest way.

It’s funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it’s fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

That includes people who call themselves Muslims but who don’t lead their lives as such – people who drink, who don’t pray, who don’t fast, who have constantly changing partners and who are unable to recite the Koran.

The love I have for you burns faster than a forest fire.

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.