Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
DUKE ELLINGTONBilly 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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Problems are chances for us to do our best.
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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.
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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.
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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.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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I’m sure critics have their purpose, 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 he did.
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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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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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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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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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Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
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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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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON