Louis Armstrong

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

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

Never play anything the same way twice.

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

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

Making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

I’d take my guitar and play on the streets. A gospel song would get me a pat on the head. But a blues would get me a dime. So you see why I stuck with the blues.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

When I decided that I wanted to be a Jazz musician, I knew that it was about improvising.

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.

When the music changes, so does the dance.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…