Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

- Lionel Hampton

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

- Lionel Hampton

All art is communication of the artists' ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.

- Lionel Hampton

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

- Lionel Hampton

I'm motivated. The spirit hits me and I just keep going and don't stop. The more I play, the more I can invent, the more ideas come to me.

- Lionel Hampton

It's always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she's the same old broad.

- Lionel Hampton

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

- Lionel Hampton

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

- Lionel Hampton

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

- Lionel Hampton