“Well, I tell you. the first chorus, I plays the melody. The second chorus, I plays the melody round the melody, and the third chorus, I routines.”

I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.

I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I’m ready, whether it’s rehearsal or anything.

What we play is life.

I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.

All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don’t have, I don’t need.

There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.

The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.

Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.

There are long periods when life seems a small, dull round, a petty business with no point, and then suddenly we are caught up in some great event which gives us a glimpse of the solid and durable foundations of our existence.

I have divers times endeavoured to see and to know, what parts the Blood consists of; and at length I have observ’d, taking some Blood out of my own hand, that it consists of small round globuls driven through a Crystalline humidity or water.

The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn.

All things come round to him who will but wait.

I can never be anonymous – especially when I walk round looking like this; especially when I take so much trouble not to be anonymous, right?

I don’t want to just go to the playoffs, I don’t want to go to the playoffs and win the first round, second round, and not win the whole thing because it’s bittersweet.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.