Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. 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 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.

Find as much information about your subject as you can

Mean people suck

When words remain unspoken and emotions are left unexpressed, just a glint in the eyes from otherness can inflame the mind and rouse a shower of empathy. ("Only needed a light ")

No perspective, no perception.New perspective, new perception.

The burden of a porter is temporary, but the burden of a crooked politician is permanent because his conscience always carry the enormous burden of his frauds!

I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.

Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

We are nothing if we walk alone; we are everything when we walk together in step with other dignified feet.