“Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.”

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.

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

It’s almost 10 years since the 2008 crisis, but we all still remember the consequences of ignoring threats to the public finances.

I’m proud to stand up and defend against threats to our Second Amendment rights in Congress.

There is nothing more threatening to Democrats than strong Republican women!

As I’ve said repeatedly, Joe Biden in the White House is a threat to America’s safety and security.

I love to pop up at the movie theaters. I love to treat the people who are there.

Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.

I got a dog with a Napoleon complex. I have a Napoleon complex. We’re small. Anything big that we feel is threatening us, we want to fight. We’re not a pushover.

It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.