Ella Fitzgerald

It isn’t where you came from, its where you’re going that counts.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.

Forgive me if I don’t have the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

I have no one style.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.

I’ve seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I’m that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don’t think so.

Les Paul was one of the great innovators of the early electric guitar, and he made some fantastic guitar records. To me, Les Paul is very much it.