What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?

San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world

Hurry, get on board, it's comin', listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the "A" train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.

The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.