Leo Tolstoy

I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.

Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

A good player can make any instrument sound good.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

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.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.