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 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.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

All dope can do for you is kill you... the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.

I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.

God bless the child that's got his own.