“You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.”

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.

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.

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.

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

As one thing ends, another begins and I learn oh, I learn change is my constant friend.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We just need to keep battling. We’re a team that has stuck together through the good times and the bad times. Our reward is near.

My end goal is just to do projects at the end of the day that I’m proud of.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

You’re alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn’t lived it?

When people don’t like the way a play ends, they’re likely to blame the play.

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.

Its all gone pretty fast. I dont want to move on, but I know I have to.