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

Duke Ellington

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

Creation Goodness Taste True
There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Forget Inspirational Life Rule
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Famous Fate Kindness Myself Young
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?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Interest Music Problem Yourself
Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Entrance Sound Wings
I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Myself Time
There is no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Intention
Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hear Myself Performance
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Goodness Kind Music
Every man prays in his own language.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Himself Language Man Prayer
By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Association Kind Man Yourself
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Instinct Past Thinking
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 without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creation Creativity Intention One Liner
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Himself Important Known Listening Musician
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hell Music Time
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
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
Critics have their purposes, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Carry Criticism Focus Purpose Thinking
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Music Sing Song Sweet
The artist must say it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Artist Language
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
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

Appearance Interest Myself Realize Right
Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Communication Dance Important Myself People
You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Finding Silence Way Yourself
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
People do not retire. They are retired by others.
DUKE ELLINGTON

People Retirement

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

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

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Popular Authors

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