he signed his work .. you could always tell when it was Herb Ellis playing

When I joined the trio, it was as if I was capable of driving a sports car at 60, but Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson just kept pressing the pedal down, and I was trying to control the car at 80!

Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It's not the thing in itself; it's preparatory to the activity

Charlie Christians' contributions to the electric guitar are as big as Thomas Edisons' contributions to the world.

I'm not interested in a marketable product: I'm interested in what I know from my life experience to be standards of excellence

Charlie Christian showed me a lot, and was a great help, but even then, I realised that if I was going to make it, it was no use copying Charlie

The days of our years are threescore years and ten and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength labour and sorrow for it is soon cut off and we fly away.

The way that people show me love on Twitter? I don't know man. It's amazing.

When I got to be about 16,17 I got into a beauty pageant and I was allowed to start playing around with makeup.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

If some crazy idea stays in my head for long enough, then there's no fighting it. I just say, Okay, let's go.

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

As a woman, you don't have really much freedom of choice in the Middle East - very often, by the time they are 13 or 14, girls get married.

He’s just another man who wants to teach me something.

To me happiness, true happiness is when you can really dance with sad.

Every door opens to something and it is better to go toward that something than to sit staring at the blank wall of time.