Ella Fitzgerald

I sing like I feel.

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.

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

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.

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

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

I have no one style.

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

I can’t understand these guys who just have to have your autograph. I asked one of them ‘What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?’

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I’m honest.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.

When the label came to me to say, ‘would you like to do another record,’ I said, ‘Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let’s do it.’ And that was pretty much it… I never stopped writing, it’s just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

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

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve; I write about them.

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

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.