I finally decided if I was going to make a living, I was gonna have to come to New York.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

Everybody cryin' mercy / When they don't know the meaning of the word.

The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.

Ever since the world ended, I don't go out as much

I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me.

I been getting good crowds. It only took 50 years.

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.

I loved you once and now I must spend my whole life explaining why.

I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.

It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it -- both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code -- just feminine code.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.

I've spent my whole life fighting for free-market principles and the Constitution. That's not going to change.

Look how the blue-eyed violets glance love to one another.

So then I though I'd make some plans, but Fire thought she'd really rather be Water instead.

I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

We've moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we're moving from knowledge to information, and that information is so partial – that we're creating incomplete human beings.