Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTONI 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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
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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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My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
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There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.
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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
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Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
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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.
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I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
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There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON