Harry Belafonte

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

To imitate someone is to insult them.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

Even now, at 82 years old, if I don’t learn something every day, you know what I think? It’s a day lost. Now, I don’t practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I’m doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

The Blues is never old.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

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.

There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music and as an art form.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.