Abbey Lincoln

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

The best thing you can do is to be a woman and stand before the world and speak your heart.

I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I’m just trying to create context for me to improve my musicianship.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. ‘Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

The guitar chose me.