I think our material is our lives. That's part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.
If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.
My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people.
I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!
You can't take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I've been playing 50 years, and that's what I've been doing in order to keep in that groove there.
You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
Even If I have two three days off, you still have to blow that horn. You have to keep up those chops. . . I have to warm up everyday for at least an hour.
The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought.
I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.
We always spend more time on the throwing events and a little bit more on the long jump. They're my weaker events - they don't come as naturally to me as running and jumping. I like the hurdles and the high-jump, I'm a springy, speedy athlete so those suit me.
Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.