I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTONPlaying ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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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.
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New 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.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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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
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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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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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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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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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I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
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My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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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.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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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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If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
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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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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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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
DUKE ELLINGTON