Allen Toussaint Quotes

#1. There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.

Ishmael Reed

#2. He's a seminal force, a guru, an original creator of the New Orleans piano style.. the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac Rebenack, James Booker, and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master.

Jerry Wexler

#3. To travel and to get around different places, especially in station wagons, you could really see America.

Allen Toussaint

#4. The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.

Allen Toussaint

#5. I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.

Allen Toussaint

#6. As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.

Allen Toussaint

#7. Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is in essence the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled.

Paula Gunn Allen

#8. Interior decor is my guilty pleasure. If I'm going to splurge on something, it's more for my home than for clothes.

Kourtney Kardashian

#9. As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.

Allen Toussaint

#10. Any attempt to dismiss a phenomenon that is not understood merely by explaining it as hallucination becomes irrelevant when a coherent scientific theory can be applied.

Amit Goswami

#11. She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty, and to feel that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be, 'truth, reverence, and good will,' then her friend Friedrich Bhaer was not only good, but great.

Louisa May Alcott

#12. The language should be accorded just the same dignity and respect as those other standards that science was then also defining.

Simon Winchester

#13. I love you, Jude."
...
"And that makes me the luckiest bastard in the world.

Nicole Williams

#14. When you're playing live, those people who you're trying to please and reach, they're right there giving you feedback. And you don't get that feedback in the studio.

Allen Toussaint

#15. We are living in a period of commerical globalization. What we really need is spiritual globalization.

Joan D. Chittister

#16. The ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company.

Joe Abercrombie

#17. To get to New Orleans you don't pass through anywhere else. That geographical location, being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with the progress.

Allen Toussaint

#18. Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

Allen Toussaint

#19. My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

Allen Toussaint

#20. And do respect the women of the world; remember you all had mothers.

Allen Toussaint

#21. No matter what race we are, what ethnic background, sexual orientation, or what views we may have, we are all human. Unfortunately, not all humans see it that way.

Erin Gruwell

#22. To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.

Allen Toussaint