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 just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That’s why I wanted the clarinet.

I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

All music is beautiful.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.