Ella Fitzgerald

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

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 sing like I feel.

The fabulous places I’ve been, wonderful things that’ve happened, great people I’ve met ought to make a story.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

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

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.

I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

Music should always be an adventure.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

It’s not technique — it’s what you have to say.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.