“The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.”

I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?

The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.

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.

New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.

I don’t need time, I need a deadline.

There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.

For one who knows me, I am one with him; for one who wants to know me, I am very near to him; and for one who does not know me, I am a beggar before him.

The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.

I knew that if I did not start chanting with people, that I would never be able to clean out the dark corners of my own heart. I knew it with every cell in my body and mind.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

Don’t give up on your dreams. You can become the person you know you really are.

Afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and beat more.

Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.

Do not offend devotees or even non-devotees. Because all those whom we know as devotees today were once not devotees.