Quotes
 It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing).- Playing 'Bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
- It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.
- Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.
- Roaming through the jungle of 'oohs' and 'ahs,' searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
- If it sounds good, it IS good.
- There's two kinds of music: good and bad. I like both.
- A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
- Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.
- By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.
- Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
- Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
- I am a bandleader and I am a composer. I am not a teacher.
- I don't believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
- I don't pursue anything. The only thing I always answer is my own impulse.
- I like any and all of my associations with music- writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
- I live with music.
- I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
- I'm a telephone freak, the greatest invention since peanut brittle.
- I'm the world's worst disciplinarian. There's too much responsibility in being a leader! You have to have the dignity and authority of a leader, and that's all so heavy!
- Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.
- Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
- My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.
- My biggest kick in music-playing or writing-is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
- Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
- Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
- The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
- There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
- There is no art when one does something without intention.
- You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.
- Jazz is music-Swing is business.
duke ellington
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