Nat King Cole

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

Most women would not be happy being me. People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

What makes you different or weird. That’s your strength.

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.

Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Being cool is being your own self, not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.

Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

I’m intelligent. Some people would say I’m very, very, very intelligent.

I always want to think of myself as an underdog.

I have an attention span that’s as long as it has to be.

Don’t ever call a girl fat. Even if you’re joking.

There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.