Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I've ever heard.

I don't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating.

Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.

I got everything I wanted. When I was young in Kansas City, I knew nothing about Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, of all those concert halls, of all those countries. I did not know what it was like to direct a band... All I wanted was to be big, to be in show-business, and to travel...and that's what I've been doing all my life.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, 'Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.'

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.