“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.”

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”.

You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.

I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?

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.

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.

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.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.

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.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

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.