Fats Waller

Be sure it’s true when you say I love you. It’s a sin to tell a lie. Millions of heart have been broken. Just because these words were spoken.

No one to talk with, all by myself. No one to walk with, but I’m happy on the shelf.

I love you, yes I do, I love you. If you break my heart I’ll die. So be sure it’s true when you say I love you It’s a sin to tell a lie.

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

Whenever I’m with you alone. You weave a magic spell and though it be a danger zone. I only know that you’re swell.

I’m a bit of a P.T. Barnum. I make stars out of everyone.

I was a very confident little kid.

My mum and my dad are the sweetest couple.

People say you can’t please everyone all the time. I don’t believe that. I think you can. I’m not like, ‘Oh I’m Kanye West.’ I’m like, ‘Oh you don’t like it? Oh wow!’ To the point where I know you have to like it.

Everyone wants to be black so bad I wake up feeling so exclusive!

I think mystery is kind of great. I don’t know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner – not really – and I like that. I love watching their movies because they’re my personal movie stars. I don’t know what they eat and who their trainer is.

You could put a blond wig on a hot-water heater and some dude would try to f**k it.

Who can wear the skimpiest outfit? I mean come on. These young girls are talented singers, they don’t need that, but they feel they have to be in competition to have the least covering. That’s the saddest thing.

The ladies of comedy now are comfortable dressing up. It’s not forbidden anymore.

The trouble is now, with rock’n’roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in.

[on Trump] Many people are happy to see him in office. Some are voters who think he’ll bring jobs back and shake up Washington; others are happy simply because he isn’t Hillary Clinton, and others of course are Vladimir Putin and Scott Baio. But, for the rest of us, we are faced with the same questions as a guy that woke up the day after a Vegas bachelor party, deep in the desert, naked, tied to a cactus and a dead clown, namely: How the f**k did we get here? and What the f**k do we do now?

I’ve never done a romantic comedy, because it seems they can’t just tell a love story. It’s always something like a radio station does a poll and decides these two people will get along, and if they do they get a million dollars. You don’t need all of that to get into a love story.

Actors are an insecure breed. It’s hard to have your career depend upon other people’s opinions of what you do.

I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.

My first kiss was when I was 12.