Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

In this country kings or dukes don't amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.

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.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.