Top 100 Sonny's Quotes
#1. two blocks down from my house? What the hell is going on?" "Nothing good," Marino says. I Google Sonny's Lawn Care. There's no such
Patricia Cornwell
#2. I remember when we did our first read-through, Sonny [Bono] looks at the script and he goes, 'Okay, I'll see you guys later. Chai-ay-oh!' And I said, 'It's ciao! Aren't you Italian? C-i-a-o doesn't spell chai-ay-oh.' [Laughs.] Sonny's dead, so he won't be embarrassed if I tell that story.
Teri Garr
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. We'll have all the same players ... We'll be missing one, actually.
Sonny Bono
#6. 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
#8. (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
#9. There's the difference between hardcore motorcycle riders and people who own motorcycles. Some people ride'em and some people trailer'em.
Sonny Barger
#10. 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
#11. I will cut all state taxes by at least one third.
Sonny Landham
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. We must get rid of the IRS. It's a bureaucracy fraught with totalitarianism.
Sonny Bono
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. You want to bang something too, sonny, you can borrow my shovel!
Abigail Roux
#21. Action is drama. If we cannot make the audience laugh, smile or cry with us, we are not actors.
Sonny Chiba
#22. I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
Sonny Rollins
#24. 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
#25. I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.
Brownie McGhee
#26. 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
#27. I am running for governor of Kentucky as the people's advocate.
Sonny Landham
#28. Very unfairly, there's a negative image of the kid, which really stems from the greed and selfishness of the NBA and NCAA. They're forcing these kids to go to school.
Sonny Vaccaro
#29. It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.
Sonny Rollins
#30. Emilio, shut the fuck up!" Carhart shouted at him, turning entirely to give his friend an incredulous look. "What's wrong with you?"
Emilio shrugged innocently, raising his eyebrows high. "I don't know how to take instructions slash am a bad person?
Santino Hassell
#31. Not much comes easy in this world, Sonny. If it does, it's best to be suspicious of it. It's probably not worth much.
Homer Hickam
#32. Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
#33. An actor's body should be full of emotions, whether it is happiness or sorrow, pain or joy, enraged or elated.
Sonny Chiba
#34. You've got to give someone like Cher a lot of credit. She's worked very hard to get where she is. I can't take that away from her.
Sonny Bono
#35. It's time for these people to have accountability for what is being done.
Sonny Landham
#36. Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.
Sonny Rollins
#37. When you have kids, your castle becomes their bouncy castle. In my case, this is literally true. Jimmy Kimmel bought Sonny and Natalia this inflatable castle in 2012. It's the real deal. At first, I thought he had rented it. No, he bought it.
Adam Carolla
#38. I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.
Sonny Rollins
#39. I thought for sure you were about to ravish her. I've read a lot of books, and that was just like a scene that ends with the hero ravishing the maiden."
"I was closer to strangling her."
The little old lady chuckles in a knowing kind of way. "That's a different kind of book, sonny.
Emma Chase
#40. 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
#41. I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
Sonny Rollins
#42. If a writer's work lifts you, remain loyal to that experience, even after you've grown beyond it. The book did what it did at the time that you needed it. Don't put it down for not being able to grow with you. It did its job.
Bridgette Hayden
#43. There are so many great songwriters that I love and respect, it's an honor to get the opportunity to sing any of their songs.
Sonny Burgess
#44. I don't think drugs should be illegal. I'm not an advocate of everybody running out and using drugs, but I think the drug wars are not working, there's millions and millions of dollars being spent on the drug war that we're never going to win.
Sonny Barger
#45. Don't cling to fame. You're just borrowing it. It's like money. You're going to die, and somebody else is going to get it.
Sonny Bono
#46. You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.
Sonny Terry
#47. NBA has a selfish rationale. It saves the owners money by delaying the time a player gets to a second, more lucrative contract. Even the player's union is on board. There are only 450 jobs in the NBA, and the one-and-done protects veterans' jobs.
Sonny Vaccaro
#48. I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.
Sonny Rollins
#49. Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.
Sonny Rollins
#50. Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad.
Sonny Barger
#51. It's very easy to learn. And very difficult to master.
Sonny Terry
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. People will always go to games. And not just Duke versus North Carolina. Even Appalachian State against Chatworth.
Sonny Vaccaro
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Requiring valid, photographic identification is a common sense step to ensure voter integrity and sound elections.
Sonny Perdue
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Cher wanted to be an entertainer more than I've seen anybody want to be an entertainer in my life.
Sonny Bono
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.
Sonny Rollins
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. My punches are just as hard in Chicago as in New York.
Sonny Liston
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. If talk was money, you'd be a millionaire. If thoughts could kill, there'd be no one here.
Sonny Terry
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating.
Sonny Liston
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. I feel kind of like the black sheep in Congress, but here I am.
Sonny Bono
#87. Beginning in 1978, Nike paid coaches to put their shoes on the team.
Sonny Vaccaro
#88. 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
#89. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. My little boy Sonny makes me laugh all the time. He has good comedic timing.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
#94. I'm not homophobic, I'm not a bigot, I'm not pandering to hatred.
Sonny Bono
#95. 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
#96. I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society.
Sonny Rollins
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. How would you like to find out how good my right is?
Sonny Liston
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