It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship.

Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.

What we play is life.

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!

The sky's always falling. Always. You'll see. People have no idea.

This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

Fear is excitement without the breath.

Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.

Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

I've worked with everyone from Ice Cube to Snoop Dogg ... right across to working with pop stars like Justin Timberlake. Why those artists came to me is because they wanted my sound.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind.