Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

And when you're poor, you grow up fast.

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

So I asked him to play "Trav'lin' All Alone." That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. . . . When I showed Mom the money for the rent and told her I had a regular job singing for eighteen dollars a week, she could hardly believe it.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.