I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

Everybody cryin' mercy / When they don't know the meaning of the word.

The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.

Ever since the world ended, I don't go out as much

I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me.

I been getting good crowds. It only took 50 years.

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.

Your love is the platform for my passion manifesto.

Finding happiness by delivering it.

It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch.

Like the archers of Agincourt, John O'Neal and the 254 Swiftboat Veterans took down their own haughty Frenchman.

Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.

The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

In a male-dominated environment, things are very macho, and you can't show weakness.

The farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him.