Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

And then there's my Grandson: He's certainly got the music together, there's just no question about it.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Pass that thing, slightly, lightly and politely.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't

You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What-doesn't make a difference!

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 usually never got out of there before four or five o'clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

A phoenix ain't nuthin' but a burd.

You ask me to write you a poem, I pen you an empty ocean, You run away.You ask me who I am, I paint you a breaking sky, You weep in the rain.

Our independence shall be our total dependence on the Divine Being, God.

But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we're humankind, and not angels.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done.

If studies on lab rats are any indication, human beings have a deep-seated fear of a big, scary cat being let into their cage.

Be the weirdest little weird in all Weird Town.

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

In a civil war… every side is wrong. It’s hopeless to try to untangle it. Everyone is a victim.

Holyfield is nothing but class, and I think he's a breath of fresh air for the sport.