The artist must say it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTONIt 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
More Duke Ellington Quotes
-
-
Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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 -
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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 -
It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
A goal is a dream with a finish line.
DUKE ELLINGTON






