Duke Ellington Quotes

One likes to believe in the freedom of music...

Jazz has been the voice of freedom for so many countries over the past half century.

One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.

The freedom you feel when you're actually in control of your own music is fantastic.

To me, music has to be about freedom. It's the most important thing in my life.

Well, jazz is to me, a complete lifestyle. It's bigger than a word. It's a much bigger force than just something that you can say. It's something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

My music is like my freedom space.

Whenever somebody tells me they want me to stop singing, I'm gone.

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

People can't just listen to the music and have their own imagination and take them where they wanna go.

Jazz is pretty much the freest thing you can be a part of. It's the closest thing I can get to flying. It's fun, interactive. In its own way, it's a sport.

Making music is all about forgetting about everything around you.

I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.

Jazz voices that unvanquishable, natural will toward creaativity and self-expression, depite everything, in the here and now.

Jazz music is the power of now.

All films are born free and equal.

I think the people are just looking for freedom in music...There's a lot of she-bop she-bop going on out there. Maybe they're tired of that same old thing.

Jazz is a state of mind. There's no boundaries.

To me, jazz is the closest thing to insanity that there is in music.

As a writer, you are free.

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want.

...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.

The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

There's a great freedom you get when you're making TV that you don't get when you're doing film.

In the end, you can't censor the truth, especially when it comes packaged in hot music.