“The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.”

“My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.”

“There's just one thing I can't figure out. My income tax!”

“The only prejudice I've found anywhere in TV is in some advertising agencies, and there isn't so much prejudice as just fear.”

“Primarily I'm a meat man, although once in a while I toy with a few vegetables.”

“The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.”

“I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.”

“The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.”

“The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

“'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.”

“Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely identified with such familiar ballads as 'Stardust' and 'The Christmas Song' that it's hard to imagine anyone else performing them.”