You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

I don't get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

You either have it or you don't. You play your horn just like you sing a song or a hymn. If it's in your heart, you express yourself in the tune.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.

As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.