How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

There is no art when one does something without intention.

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.