I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

To win, depend on your thoughts and actions but not on circumstances.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

When I grow up I want to be just like Benny Carter!

Let us treasure up in our soul some of those things which are permanent..., not of those which will forsake us and be destroyed, and which only tickle our senses for a little while.

God not only sees where you are, He sees where you can be.

In the midst of conflict, there is absolutely nothing that produces gains as dramatically as listening.

The future is bought with the present.

I can't eat processed food.

There is always a delightful sense of movement, vibration and life.

I like walking around and listening to music. When my steps coincide with a beat, in my head I feel in unison with the world that I'm living in.