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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

Duke Ellington

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bad Category Goodness Listening Stop
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
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Himself Important Known Listening Musician
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Knowledge Master Musician
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
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
Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Discipline Value Virtue
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Goodness Taste True
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Kind Time Wasted Worry Yourself
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTON

God Language Prayer Understand
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Live Music Myself Occupation Profession
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Important Meaning Music Yourself
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!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Money Myself Pay Togetherness
A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Doll Herself Pretty Woman
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 no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Intention

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

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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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Popular Authors

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