“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.”

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.

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.

People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.

It’s a pity nobody believes in simple lust anymore.

Love fucks me in ways even lust would envy.

Lips so gorgeous they could make fuck off sound like a love letter.

There is no disease so destructive as lust.

Women have hunger two-fold, shyness four-fold, daring six-fold, and lust eight-fold as compared to men.

Raided my heart, after you lust for me among others, for some reason you chose me it was chaos at first sight.

You have your look. That lethal fusion of mischief and innocence, the one that maddens statues with lust.

Those born blind cannot see; similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil; and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions.