Ella Fitzgerald

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.

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

I sing like I feel.

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.

I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

We quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

Jazz music is our original American culture.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

Black and white players hadn’t appeared together in public before Teddy Wilson and I began working with B.G.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.