“I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn, What comes out is what I feel.”

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.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.

God bless the child that’s got his own.

The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy … it’s sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock ‘n’ roll band.

You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played.

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield, and the horn of my salvation; my stronghold.

You’re like the devil with horns in your head, the only way I’ll get you is to get you in bed.

Companies would probably do better with CEOs who didn’t blow their own horn.

It’s said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It’s the wind from the dinner horn that does it.

I’m one-hundred-fifty miles off Cape Horn, both autopilots are broken, and my boat is drifting toward one of the nastiest chunks of ocean on the face of the earth.

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.