My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck.

In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from.

You can't make jazz without using certain elements of Latin music.

I’ve been here before, dreaming myselfbackwards, among grappling hooks of light.True to the seasons, I’ve lived every wordspoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?

You can achieve anything, as long as you put your mind to it.

I suspect that LaGuardia is an elaborate prank, and New York has a real airport nearby that only locals know about.

You know what, I'll suffer in silence.

And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative.

If you quit once, it's so much easier to quit the second, third, fourth time.

What if the question is not why I am so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

All I do is convert liberals to conservatism. That's what I do, and that's why they don't like me.

I've come more to terms with the fact that I sound like myself. No matter what I do, I sound like myself.