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

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.

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

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”.

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.

I think a man needs to be a man. To hold a woman the way she wants to be held. Just do whatever your woman wants, and you’ll be fine.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “…There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.

Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you’re half-way to a dictatorship.

The way to find your calling is to look at the way you were created. Your gifts have not emerged by accident.

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.