Frank Sinatra

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

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.

When you hear my lyrics, you hear the shots that I throw at people. I throw shots because I always been the underdog. I got rejected so many times, and I say it in my lyrics constantly.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

I’m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a ‘universal musical mind.’

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

You only get better by playing.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.

The audience should feel they are hearing the future, arriving just on time.