Boris Vian

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

It’s not what you do, but the way you’re doing it and in the end that’s all that we have.

You can have tone and technique but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

People love us when we play what we want to play but we’re starving.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.