Quotes About Sonny

#1. I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

Sonny Rollins

#2. You don't see people in prison treating each other the way people do on the outside, and the reason is that if you're rude to somebody in prison, you get killed.

Sonny Barger

#3. People have said to me, You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument. But I've got 10 gold records.

Sonny Bono

#4. We're flimflam artists. But remember, sonny, you can't con people unless they're greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can't cheat an honest man.

Sidney Sheldon

#5. Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

Sonny Rollins

#6. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

Sonny Rollins

#7. Sonny was a spiky ray of light to those lucky enough to be close to him, but life had taught him to play his cards close to his chest.

Garrett Leigh

#8. A boxing match is like a cowboy movie. There's got to be good guys and there's got to be bad guys. And that's what people pay for - to see the bad guys get beat.

Sonny Liston

#9. Cher wanted to be an entertainer more than I've seen anybody want to be an entertainer in my life.

Sonny Bono

#10. Sonny, don't you tell me what's worthwhile
true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that.

William Goldman

#11. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

Sonny Rollins

#12. Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided
with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.

P. J. O'Rourke

#13. Requiring valid, photographic identification is a common sense step to ensure voter integrity and sound elections.

Sonny Perdue

#14. One-and-done is the most damaging thing in college basketball. It brings money into the college game, because it kickstarts the bidding war. When you know a kid can't turn pro and is going to go to school for one year and then go pro, that's when you see everyone going to games and courting players.

Sonny Vaccaro

#15. What would be wrong with letting a kid go pro, and if it doesn't work out he can come back to college? What's the harm in that? The reason is the word "amateurism." The NCAA has to protect colleges' tax exemption.

Sonny Vaccaro

#16. I have no belief in the system. So Sonny is perfectly at home (in Washington D.C.). Politicians are one step down below used-car salesmen.

Cher

#17. I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

Sonny Rollins

#18. People will always go to games. And not just Duke versus North Carolina. Even Appalachian State against Chatworth.

Sonny Vaccaro

#19. Dignity is treasure one should never lose. When humbling yourself, Don't bow down to any man. For he is no greator than you

Sonny Cele

#20. What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musical material, he is never repetitive and hasn't had to invent a new language. Also, he never asked me to do anything but swing!

Pete La Roca

#21. What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

Sonny Rollins

#22. What did you expect? Welcome, sonny? Make yourself at home? Marry my daughter? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know ... morons

Gene Wilder

#23. I'll send you a friend request."
"You do that, sonny. I'm on the Internet every last Friday in the month, from eleven to three.

Nina George

#24. There's Brandon Jennings. The NBA told him to go to college for a year, and he said, "Screw that. I'll go to Europe and make a million bucks and then come back." And he's proven to be a pretty damn good player. He's done as much for the game as Michael [Jordan] by forging a different route.

Sonny Vaccaro

#25. Our best teachers do more than impart facts and figures - they inspire and encourage students and instill a true desire to learn. That's a fine art in itself.

Sonny Perdue

#26. Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can't talk. The man can't fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he's gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

Muhammad Ali

#27. How would you like to find out how good my right is?

Sonny Liston

#28. I call it people-to-people politics and that's what politics should be about, reaching out and helping one another and touching one another about what we're going to do.

Sonny Perdue

#29. When sorrows surround you few will comfort you. When happiness arises many will be part of the celebrations
And when Tragedy happens only the Lord is a prayer by calling out his Glorious name

Sonny Cele

#30. Here's a lesson for you, Sonny: Don't write if you can talk, don' talk if you can nod your head, don't nod if you don't have to

Ed Falco

#31. I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society.

Sonny Rollins

#32. In them days I just as soon died
except for my harmonica. It was like a friend who didn't give a damn if I could see or not.

Sonny Terry

#33. I'm not homophobic, I'm not a bigot, I'm not pandering to hatred.

Sonny Bono

#34. My little boy Sonny makes me laugh all the time. He has good comedic timing.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

#35. From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto.

Brownie McGhee

#36. Kobe [Bryant] had the biggest contract for a high school kid. He was the first one to get more than a million a year.

Sonny Vaccaro

#37. Jazz never ends ... it just continues.

Sonny Rollins

#38. My punches are just as hard in Chicago as in New York.

Sonny Liston

#39. I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Sonny Rollins

#40. Beginning in 1978, Nike paid coaches to put their shoes on the team.

Sonny Vaccaro

#41. I feel kind of like the black sheep in Congress, but here I am.

Sonny Bono

#42. Joining a band of brothers together, a group with one common interest or mission, whether as a company, a team, or a motorcycle club, requires not only a commitment to loyalty but an understanding of self-preservati on as well..

Sonny Barger

#43. I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

Sonny Rollins

#44. The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating.

Sonny Liston

#45. You see, greatness for a state doesn't require some huge monument for all to see. It is not a journey to a particular destination - but a commitment to follow a course of constant and never-ending improvement.

Sonny Perdue

#46. But we know that the very God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. And sometimes we're called upon to defend both life and liberty - God's blessings to Americans, and indeed, to all of His creation.

Sonny Perdue

#47. If talk was money, you'd be a millionaire. If thoughts could kill, there'd be no one here.

Sonny Terry

#48. I'm not a deeply religious person and I don't really know if there's a God or not and I don't really even care, but something out there has got to control something. Because people can put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger and live and someone else can slip on the curb and die.

Sonny Barger

#49. I've never really been serious about my villainy. I don't have a master plan. I suppose my philosophy is: Every villain has a mother. For every cold-blooded killer on your screen, there's a little old lady somewhere who calls him 'sonny.'

Anthony Zerbe

#50. You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.'
'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.

James Baldwin

#51. We'll have all the same players ... We'll be missing one, actually.

Sonny Bono

#52. After the NBA and ABA merged, players could come out after high school. Still, there were only a few cases prior to Kevin Garnett coming out in 1995, so Nike and the other companies were only involved in the college game.

Sonny Vaccaro

#53. I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.

Brownie McGhee

#54. I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

Sonny Rollins

#55. Well, Sonny should make you plenty powerful then.

Samantha Towle

#56. I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

Sonny Rollins

#57. Action is drama. If we cannot make the audience laugh, smile or cry with us, we are not actors.

Sonny Chiba

#58. You want to bang something too, sonny, you can borrow my shovel!

Abigail Roux

#59. They used to say it was bad for Indians to drink, but it's bad for anybody. When they drink they lose their cool, a lot of us. Like when we played with Sonny Boy, I would never get paid, you know. He would drink up all the money.

Ike Turner

#60. As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

Ted Leo

#61. We must get rid of the IRS. It's a bureaucracy fraught with totalitarianism.

Sonny Bono

#62. When you are a member of an organization, life isn't only about you. As part of a circle of people who depend on one another, you watch one another's back and remain loyal to the concept of brotherhood.

Sonny Barger

#63. Now the kids are portrayed as dirty when they talk to an agent, a shoe guy, some hanger-on. Well, it's only natural that people are circling them - there are millions of dollars involved.

Sonny Vaccaro

#64. I thought you said you dislocated Selene's shoulder!"" Sonny called to Cait, who'd tumbled for safety into the black water behind the stern of the boat.
""I did! I guess someone elserelocated it!"" she shouted back.

Lesley Livingston

#65. One of my disciples, a lanky saxophonist named Sonny Rollins, played his horn for three years on a bridge in New York City, his tender jazz melodies wafting between the traffic noises. I would pause there often, on the girders, just to listen. Or

Mitch Albom

#66. No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Sonny Rollins

#67. I will cut all state taxes by at least one third.

Sonny Landham

#68. I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.

Sonny Rollins

#69. Treat me good, I'll treat you better, treat me bad and I'll treat you worse.

Sonny Barger

#70. Come over here and sit on my knee and finish your orange juice.

Sonny Liston

#71. Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Ray Davies

#72. And the beat goes on...

Sonny Bono

#73. Believe me, Kelley. If I'm not ... it's because I'm already dead." He stroked her hair, and she could feel his breath warm on her forehead, like a kiss. "Because anyone that would seek to hurt you would have to kill me first.

Lesley Livingston

#74. Inspiration is not what you find from the outter world or what you seek for within the nearest regions.
Its what you tend to find when you search within your own life and event that partake. Search closely because Inspiration will never tell you when it passes-bt

Sonny Cele

#75. There's the difference between hardcore motorcycle riders and people who own motorcycles. Some people ride'em and some people trailer'em.

Sonny Barger

#76. We've got thousands and thousands of people in jail on minor drug violations and they really don't need to be in jail. They're people whose lives are ruined. If drugs were legal there would be a lot less people using them.

Sonny Barger

#77. One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Sonny Rollins

#78. We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

Sonny Perdue

#79. The South is a great driving destination for tourism - heritage, cultural and many other types of tourism.

Sonny Perdue

#80. So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

Sonny Terry

#81. (As a boy) I was listening to Sonny Boy Williamson's (I) records and I would close my eyes and I could visualize myself playing the harp.

Junior Wells

#82. I always look ahead, to the side, but never back.

Sonny Barger

#83. Tuppence was what my grandmother nicknamed my mother, so she gave it to me. My sister is called Angel, and my brother was going to be called Bubba or Sonny, until they let me and my sister name him Josh.

Tuppence Middleton

#84. It's a clear day Sonny, L A N D.

Tyler Perry

#85. What is qualified? What have I been qualified for in my life? I haven't been qualified to be a mayor. I'm not qualified to be a songwriter. I'm not qualified to be a TV producer. I'm not qualified to be a successful businessman. And so, I don't know what qualified means.

Sonny Bono

#86. Aftera brief silence, Kenzie said, "Don't you believe in second chances?"
The room seemed a little colder, a little darker, as if a shadow had passed over the sun.
"Sonny Lee always said, 'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Cinda Williams Chima

#87. The sun never sets on a Hells Angels' patch.

Sonny Barger

#88. Are you listening, Mr. Thornfield?" Sonny prepared himself for some dreadful curse in the name of God, or perhaps some ancient African demon. "I'm listening." "I forgive you.

Anonymous

#89. In terms of my work with Nike, obviously signing Michael Jordan to a $500,000 contract in 1984 set a new precedent for the business side of the game.

Sonny Vaccaro

#90. If they ever let me in the ring with him [Cassius Clay], I'm liable to be put away for murder.

Sonny Liston

#91. One of my great joys in life is being a pilot. There is a great sense of freedom in soaring through the sky. You get a different perspective up there. Seeing things that aren't so apparent from the ground.

Sonny Perdue

#92. My most basic credo is: I never said freedom was cheap. And it ain't. Never will be. It's been the highest priced and most precious commodity in my life.

Sonny Barger

#93. The greatest thing that I have learned is probably the simplest thing any of us can learn: I am who I am.

Sonny Barger

#94. I would like to thank everyone who has read my novels and has taken the time to rate them. I'm working hard to bring more meaningful and beautifully written novels in 2016.

Sonny Hill

#95. America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Sonny Rollins

#96. I don't believe in God. I believe something is happening, I'm not sure what it is.

Sonny Barger

#97. I've been trying to find a way for the terror and the beauty to live together in one song. I know it's possible.

Sonny Sharrock

#98. I can honestly say and swear on my patch that I have never in my life hurt anybody that I really didn't feel had it coming, because they was either trying to hurt me or my friends. If everybody was like that it [life] would be real different.

Sonny Barger

#99. I remain committed to my core family as one I can trust and depend on. The end result is the assurance that I'm surrounded by the people who will help me, stick by me, and fight alongside me, through good and bad, life and death.

Sonny Barger

#100. With all due respect to lawyers, it's wonderful that you have this intricate knowledge. You break down words to the nth degree. And sometimes I find it rather disgusting. And it goes on and on.

Sonny Bono