I was searching for some music quotes for one of my last assignments of the semester, and I found myself digging through Music Is My Mistress, Duke Ellington's autobiography. I was heavily into Duke and his music my last few years of high school, and I devoured everything I could find by or about him, but especially his own writings. (Today I still have great respect for Duke but I don't listen to him as much as I once did - I think I achieved a burnout I'm still recovering from - but when he makes an appearance on iTunes my foot starts tapping and I start smiling, just as I did in 11th grade.) He wrote a short chapter that I apparently felt was of importance those 10+ years ago, as it was highlighted and marked. I reread it, and felt it was worth sharing here. It appears about two-thirds through the book, as his talking about his overseas travels in the late 1960s: