Louis Armstrong

“There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.”

“I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I'm ready, whether it's rehearsal or anything.”

“The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.”

“When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it's been made into 'Satchmo' - 'Satchmo' Armstrong.”

“I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.”

“Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.”

“I like kissable lips. A woman's lips must say, 'Come here and kiss me, Pops.'”

“I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don't have, I don't need.”

“I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.”

“If it sounds good, it is good.”

“We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.”

“What we play is life.”

“You blows who you is.”

“We never did try to get together and to show the younger Negroes such as myself, to try and even to show that he has ambitions - and with just a little encouragement, I could have really done something worthwhile. But instead, we did nothing but let the young upstarts know that they were young and simple, and that was that.”

“I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.”

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”