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 ELLINGTONI’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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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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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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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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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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.
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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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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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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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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.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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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.
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Billy 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.
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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.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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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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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.
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There is no art without intention.
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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.
DUKE ELLINGTON