Betty Carter famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight.
-- Betty Carter

#Music #Bird #Tonight
You can do anything you want to do, if you know what to do.
-- Betty Carter

#Want #Songwriting
If you're sitting in that audience ready to fight me from the very beginning, I'm going to have a hard time getting to you. But if you've got a heart at all, I'm going to get it.
-- Betty Carter

#Heart #Fighting #Hard Times
This is our culture, and I don't care who the musician is, if he avoids black people, then he is scared of something. He doesn't have confidence in himself or else he doesn't believe in what he's doing.
-- Betty Carter

#Believe #People #Black
After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever.
-- Betty Carter

#Forever #Alive #Littles

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done.
So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
I asked my daughter when she was 16, What's the buzz on the street with the kids? She's going, to be honest, Dad, most of my friends aren't into Kiss. But they've all been told that it's the greatest show on Earth.
I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits. To the birds, the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. The birds say sweet or they say sour, but from the tree's point of view, this is just the chattering of birds.
Whoever says that all music is prohibited, let him also claim that the songs of birds are prohibited.
You've built your homeyou've fledged your birdsyou've beaten the windwith your bonesyou've finished alonewhat no one began
Americans are so direct. They'd ask me, 'What's your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?' I don't know what I'm having for my tea tonight let alone a five-year plan.
All scientific work is incomplete - whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, to postpone action that it appears to demand at a given time. Who knows, asks Robert Browning, but the world may end tonight? True, but on available evidence most of us make ready to commute on the 8:30 next day.

Betty Carter famous quotes

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