Lester Young Quotes

When I was 16 or 17 I heard the Count Basie band with Jo Jones and Lester Young and Herschel Evans and I couldn't believe it. They were the greatest swing band. I really fell in love with that sound. Everybody danced! ~ Illinois Jacquet

As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane. ~ Herbie Mann

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young. ~ Sebastian Coe

In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era
by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"
my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god. ~ J.J. Johnson

The amazing thing about Sweets [Edison] was that he exactly spoke the way that he played! He was really unique, the one and only. He was one of the greatest Blues players that I ever heard and played with. Nobody can play like Sweets man, nobody! Most of us, musicians, frequently quote Sweets' phrases in our solos. Like Lester Young, Sweets had a big influence on us musicians, especially when we play some Blues. ~ Ray Brown

I'd been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and I suddenly saw what I'd been doing wrong. I'd been singing too loud. One night I was listening to a record by Lester Young, the horn player, and it came to me. Relax, just relax. It's all going to be all right. ~ Marvin Gaye

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal. ~ Lee Konitz

I used to live at the Cecil Hotel, which was next door to Minton's [Playhouse]. We used to jam just about every night when we were off. Lester [Young], Don Byas and myself - we would meet there all the time and like, exchange ideas. It wasn't a battle, or anything. We were all friends. Most of the guys around then knew where I lived. If someone came in Minton's and started to play - well, they'd give me a ring, or come up and call me down. Either I'd take my horn down, or I'd go down and listen. Those were good days. Had a lot of fun then. ~ Ben Webster

I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians. ~ Flea

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. ~ Charles Mingus

In an artistic sense, cool came to refer to someone with a signature artistic style so integral as to exude an authentic mode-of-being in the world: Miles, Bogart, Brando, Eastwood, Greco, Elvis, Lady Day, Sinatra. Such a person created something from nothing and gave the world some new artistic or psychological 'equipment for living,' to use a phrase of Kenneth Burke's. A signature style is yours and can only be carried by you: it cannot be abstracted except through dilution and commodification since it reflects an individual's complex personal experience. In this sense, cool was 'making a dollar out of fifteen cents,' to pull another phrase from the Africa-American vernacular. Lester Young was once at a bar when a tenor saxophone solo floated out of the jukebox. 'That's me,' he said happily. As he listened his mood collapsed - he realized it was one of his many imitators. 'No, that's not me,' he said sadly. To steal someone else's sound or style and capitalize on it has always been un-cool, the pretense of posers. ~ Joel Dinerstein

And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old. ~ Anne Lamott

Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs. ~ Cassandra Clare

Marriage is the internationally recognised system of relationship recognition. It is the global language of love. When we were young, most of us dreamed of one day getting married. We didn't dream about having a civil partnership. ~ Peter Tatchell

When I was very young my mother sang to me at bedtime and my dad would often play the banjo or fiddle in the evening. I knew music was important and central to everything, most particularly it had a powerful healing value and created a sense of peace and security. This stood out to me as I always felt the world was precarious and dangerous, and music supplied those moments of real peace and safety. ~ Rory Block

Young girls think they know what their hearts desire, what they want the most. When really, we know nothing of love, devotion and utter loyalty. Not until we break our own hearts when we learn that what we desire is nothing like what we thought it would be. ~Papercut Doll ~ Alexia Purdy

All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death. ~ Roland Barthes

I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And
after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power - it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope.
You gotta give them hope. ~ Harvey Milk

I don't like to play above or below people's heads. Basically, I just like to get up in front of a crowd and rip it up. ~ Angus Young

Jack grins. Anyways, Saba likes to look at my bare chest.
Lugh looks at me. Frowns. Is that a fact? he says.
I feel myself go bright red. It is not a fact, I says. You stinker, Jack. ~ Moira Young

It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticized for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is. ~ Angus Young

Derek's. Lucas'. Ben's. It's beyond me what I must do to make them realize that I'm neither object nor possession. I don't belong to any of them. ~ Bella Forrest

Although psychotherapy and writing are distinct in many ways, they are two fields whose great resource is the vast plains of the unconscious mind and how this landscape gets translated into words. As a writer, you are often asking your mind to dream while awake, and if remembering dreams is difficult in general, then it seems to follow that it would be sometimes grueling to conjure up the murky depths on call, eyes open. (Robert M. Young) calls it madness, which is a strong word, but it's not a bad one in exaggeration, because he's talking about creating a safe and bound space in which to explore all sorts of darknesses that collect in the recesses of the mind. He's talking about what we do not understand, or know about, or have control over. And the unconscious, if treated well, is the writer's very good friend. Allowing it room is crucial. Allowing it structure can be the safest way to access it without feeling overwhelmed. ~ Aimee Bender

Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. ~ Brigham Young

Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice. ~ Don Young

On September 16, in defiance of the cease-fire, Ariel Sharon's army
circled the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where Fatima and
Falasteen slept defenselessly without Yousef. Israeli soldiers set up
checkpoints, barring the exit of refugees, and allowed their Lebanese
Phalange allies into the camp. Israeli soldiers, perched on rooftops,
watched through their binoculars during the day and at night lit the sky
with flares to guide the path of the Phalange, who went from shelter to
shelter in the refugee camps. Two days later, the first western
journalists entered the camp and bore witness. Robert Fisk wrote of it
in Pity the Nation:
They were everywhere, in the road, the laneways, in the
back yards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry
and across the top of garbage tips. When we had seen a
hundred bodies, we stopped counting. Down every
alleyway, there were corpses - women, young men, babies
and grandparents - lying together in lazy and terrible
profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to
death. Each corridor through the rubble produced more
bodies. The patients at the Palestinian hospital had
disappeared after gunmen ordered the doctors to leave.
Everywhere, we found signs of hastily dug mass graves.
Even while we were there, amid the evidence of such
savagery, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the
top of the tower block to the wes ~ Susan Abulhawa

When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction." ~ Sandra Cisneros

Keep your mind young by continuing to learn about your business. ~ Frank Bettger

The young world was without a spring: it knew nothing beyond rock and water. There was the colour of open skies and of sunrise and sunset. The only sounds came from the movement of water, whether of rain or streams or waves, from thunder, and from wind sweeping across rock. ~ Jacquetta Hawkes

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. ~ Emma Goldman

I don't see how a young American can vote for, well, can vote for a Democrat. ~ Mitt Romney

April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Although contemporary advertising is relatively young, it already has a considerable tradition. Each new ad is encountered against a background of thousands of earlier ads. ~ Guy Cook

No, Kramisha, he's not black. He's a killer bird with evil for his Daddy. ~ P.C. Cast

We were the Colors of our dragons whether we lived or died. There were no other choices for us. ~ Sarah K.L. Wilson

I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. ~ Haruki Murakami

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house. ~ Sue Townsend

Hestia stared back into the empty sockets of the blackened skull and now saw that long ago they held eyes, the crying eyes of a mother that had lost her child. ~ S.E. Ellis

Also because the two young women working the kiosk seemed profoundly unconcerned by what was unfolding on CNN, either that or they were extremely stoic or they hadn't noticed yet, so visiting them was like going back in time to the paradise of a half hour earlier, when he hadn't yet known that everything was coming undone. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Even when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn't believe in miracles. ~ Juliet Marillier

They're a pair of young Satans. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Few young men know the Oedipal torment of growing up with an insanely hot, perpetually single mom. ~ Ernest Cline

So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops. ~ Ed Smith

The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that. ~ Virginia Woolf

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen. ~ Dave Brubeck

Go badly wrong. Sex, she thought. That is what is going to go wrong here. And she was right. "This woman," Mma Gabane Gabane went on, "this foolish, foolish woman met a young man who worked in the same office. He wasn't an accountant - nothing like that - he was a trainee, Mma Ramotswe, just a trainee. He was eighteen." There was a sharp intake of breath from Mma Phumele, who looked at Mma Ramotswe to gauge her reaction. She would be every bit as shocked as the rest of them, she imagined. And Mma Ramotswe was shocked. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

My first love thinks that I'm too young. He doesn't even know. Wish that I could show him what I'm feeling. ~ Nikka Costa

(Of the main character seeing a new world for the first time.) The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river. ~ C.S. Lewis

No one is all good or all bad. I know this, of course. I had to learn it at a young age. But sometimes it's easy to forget just how true it is. That it applies to everyone. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

He hopes at least after pulling himself up from one branch to another he will be able to see farther, discover where the roads lead; but the foliage beneath him is dense, the ground is soon out of sight, and if he raises his eyes toward the top of the tree he is blinded by The Sun, whose piercing rays make the leaves gleam with every colour against the light. However, the meaning of those two children seen in the tarot should also be explained: they must indicate that, looking up, the young man has realized he is no longer alone in the tree; two urchins have preceeded him, scrambling up the boughs.

They seem twins: identical, barefoot, golden blond. At this point the young man spoke, asked: "what are you two doing here?" or else: "how far is it to the top?" And the twins replied, indicating with confused gesticulation toward something seen on the horizon of the drawing, beneath the sun's rays: the walls of a city.

But where are these walls located, with respect to the tree? The Ace of Cups portrays, in fact, a city, with many towers and spires and minarets and domes rising above the walls. And also palm fronds, pheasants' wings, fins of blue moonfish which certainly jut from the city's gardens, aviaries, aquariums, among which we can imagine the two urchins, chasing each other and vanishing. And this city seems balanced on top of a pyramid, which could also be the top of a great tree; in other words, it would be a city suspended on the highest branches l ~ Italo Calvino

The moment I formulated this thought, everything aroud me seemed to droop heavily toward the earth. Outside in the garden, the eaves of the roof dripped rain like beads of weighted glass. Even the mats themselves seemed to press down upon the floor. I remember thinking that I was dacing to express not the pain of a young woman who has lost her supernatural lover, but the pain I myself would feel when my life was finally robbed of the one thing I cared most deeply about. I found myself thinking,too,of satsu; I danced the bitterness of our eternal separation.By the end I felt almost overcome with grief; but I certainly wasn't prepared for what I saw when I turned to look at the Chairman.He was sitting at the near corner of the table so that, as it happened, no one but me could see him. I thought he wore an expression of astonishment at first, because his eyes were so wide. But just as his mouth sometimes twitched when he tried not to smile, now I could see it twitching under the strain of a different emotion. I couldn't be sure, but I had to impression his eyes were heavy with tears. He looked toward the door, pretending to scratch the side of his nose so he cold wipe a finger in the corner of his eye; and he smoothed his eyebrows as if the were the source of his trouble. I was so shocked to see the Chairman in pain I felt almost disoriented for a moment. ~ Arthur Golden

Have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~ Charles Dickens

Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth. ~ J.K. Rowling

I was a young troubadour when I rode in on a song. And, I'll be an old troubadour when I'm gone. ~ George Strait

Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh. ~ Peter Capaldi

He blows out a breath, takes a step toward me. The hallway is so narrow that I'm pinned between the wall and his body, heat rolling off him in waves. "Yeah," he says, voice low. "I feel things." His green eyes burn. It's the most emotion I've seen from him so far, and I have trouble taking a full breath, my lungs compressed with tension. "That's the whole point, Ivy. I want you to feel them, too. ~ Amy Engel