Frank Sinatra

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

I’m gonna live till I die.

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

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

I never heard of a Jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do… play for the walls?

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.