Duke Ellington

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.

For us tall people, the whole key is that your hips and your knees should form a right angle when you sit down. That's where backs and hips get to be problems for big guys.

It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamelessly foolishly.

I never officially came out in any kind of really public way. I just always lived very simply and openly, but the press has never made a big fuss about me or said anything to me.