Louis Armstrong

Never play anything the same way twice.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

Music is an addiction.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

As a young cellist I had played to an audience that had included Pablo Casals and reacted with poor, nervous playing. Casals sought me out after the concert and praised me highly, somewhat easing the pain and thinking him a very kind man.

I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

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.

Music is to the soul what water is to the body.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made.

There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

To keep creating you have to be about change.