I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
DUKE ELLINGTONNew 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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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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.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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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.
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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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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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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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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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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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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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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.
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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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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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I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
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There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
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If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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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.
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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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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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Problems are chances for us to do our best.
DUKE ELLINGTON