There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.
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.
I don't sit down to write a song; they just come to me from something that somebody says, or something in the news. The punchline comes to me, and I go over it in my head and get the song form. I hadn't been doing that a lot.
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.
I just don't like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.
When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.
God's mark is on everything that obeys Him.