Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

In this country kings or dukes don't amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.

Don't be in such a hurry.

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I don't think I missed a single picture Billie Dove ever made. I was crazy for her. I tried to do my hair like her, and eventually, I borrowed her name.

They think they can make fuel from horse manure -- now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

There's no damn business like show business -- you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.

God bless the child that's got his own.

The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy ... it's sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.

I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.