Orson Welles

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

People complain about the music industry, but this is a great time to be a musician.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.