If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know." Louis Armstrong

Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.

What we play is life.

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

The young artist... will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated.

All chess players know what a combination is. Whether one makes it oneself, or is its victim, or reads of it, it stands out from the rest of the game and stirs one's admiration.

When you live in an alcoholic family or an abusive family, you tiptoe, you don't want to step on any mines.

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?

The care of a large estate is an unpleasant thing.

Hollywood is a small, familial place. Everyone does business with everybody else. The same complications occur in investment banking.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician

I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged.

Our danger is not too few, but too many options ... to be puzzled by innumerable alternatives.