top of page
"I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more People quotes

"People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone."

"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."

"People who see beauty all around them live in a beautiful world. People who see danger all around them live in a dangerous world."

"Now I don't know half of the young people in the industry. It's too spread out, too diffuse."

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

"I was put off by people at school - my cabbage wasn't as good as other people's, you know, so that put me off."
Explore more quotes by Billy Eckstine

"My youngest daughter sings. She's going to be very good. She's graduated from Music School and she's been working down around and getting her feet wet, you know. I had her out with me for a year just showing her the ropes a little bit, but she's going to be all right."

"It was my band. I organized the band and Dizzy was in the band. Dizzy was the first musical director with the band. Charlie Parker was in the band. But, no, no, that was my band."

"When you're playing music, say for instance, you're playing a part of the band and you're looking at your music, your horn is down into the stand. This way, it's up and it goes right on out to the audience, you know?"

"I was still in school at the time and Cab was very popular and everybody was doing Cab Calloway so I did."

"Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago."

"Piano should be the one. Yeah, because that's your basis. Everything is right there in front of you."

"As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like."

"I think a song that's got something to say. I'm not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don't last. But I like a song that tells a story and has some meat to it, you know, that means something."

"I just went to Harvard a little while, because I graduated from Armstrong High School in Washington and then I went up there but I didn't stay that long because I went into show business."
bottom of page