I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck.

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from.

You can't make jazz without using certain elements of Latin music.

The future is for everyone, not far, it's just tomorrow.

What may be myth in one world may always be fact in some other.

What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?

Oh, traccy traccy ply ply bracket doints and divs

You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

Revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job.

I perpetuate rumors that I've dated people that I've never actually dated.

I haven't a great Jazz band and I don't want one.

What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

The observance of one commandment, however clearly and forcibly enjoined, cannot make up for the neglect of another which is enjoined with equal clearness and equal force.