“Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.”

New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

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.

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed.

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.

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!

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.

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.

The artist must say it without saying it.

Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.

There is no art without intention.

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.

I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!

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