Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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
-
-
Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The artist must say it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON -
There is no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
A goal is a dream with a finish line.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of – or reincarnated from – royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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 -
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Problems are chances for us to do our best.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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 -
I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
DUKE ELLINGTON