Duke Ellington

"Music is my life, it's my soul, it's everything I do in this world."

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none."

"A wise man doesn't give the right answer, he poses the right question."

"There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind."

"Most of us don't give our brain a chance to work properly. We cram so much into it."

"It's like that old spiritual - you've got to lay your burden down."

"Playing 'bop' is like scrabble with all the words missing."

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

"You can't hardly make 'em understand that it ain't just about when you play loud."

"The bandstand is a sacred place."

"Simplicity is the key to all true elegance."

"I don't need time, I need only the end of time."

"There's hardly anything on this earth that I figure is worth being bored about."

"When you do something every night for four years, you learn to do it pretty good."

"I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to feel."

"You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it."

"It's all love. It has to be."

"Jazz will always be alive as long as we have an audience."

"Man, all I am is what I'm putting out there."

"The wise have always learnt something from those beneath them."

"Ellington is through. Duke is here to stay."

"I do the very best I know how, the very best I can."

"Every man prays in his own language, and there is no language that God does not understand."

"What we want to do is keep people happy about living."

"You have to believe in what you are doing."

"I've got a date with a dream."

"There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't."

"I think about the future all the time."

"Jazz is a language of its own."

"Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose beauty I may behold."