Victor Hugo

I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.

The blues tells a story in itself. It can make you happy or give you a feeling to swing.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.