Duke Ellington

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

Anyone who does anything useful will not go unpaid.

We are always seeking for those things which are in the clouds, not for those that lie at our feet.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it — teach yourself to be impatient.

Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman.

There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat.

I like to surprise myself.

Very jaded and tired and depressed and cross…Must fill my mind with air and light, and walk and blanket it in fog.

Flawed and (still) worthy.

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

You must learn that you do not have to be angry just because you have the right to be.

Being both soft and strong is a combination very few have mastered.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.