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

Duke Ellington

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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Association Audience Listening Music Perspective Play
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Learning People Teaching Understand Word
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Interest Money Music
There is no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Intention
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Alive Fans Himself Suspect
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Boundary Classical Decision Difficult Lying
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Best Chance Problem Yourself
Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Children Communication God Honesty Miracle Time
Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Loud Myself Open
People do not retire. They are retired by others.
DUKE ELLINGTON

People Retirement
It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Act Commitment Murder Play Yourself
Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Evidence Love Myself Yourself
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Goodness Taste True
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Herself Mistress Music Play
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creativity Modern
Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bond Friendship Myself Right

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

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

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