Davis Quotes

We’ve collected the best Davis Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Ruth Bradley, Michael J. Knowles, John Calipari, Sanford I. Weill, Lyoto Machida. Use them as an inspiration.

I saw ‘The Help’ on DVD. I was blown away by Viola Davis: she really straddled that fine line in the plot between what was tragic and what was heart-warming.

Ruth Bradley

All people of goodwill object to racial hatred. But no one cares that Billy Crystal darkened his skin to portray Sammy Davis Jr.

Michael J. Knowles

People, on their bucket lists, are saying, ‘I want to see a game at Rupp Arena.’ Magic Johnson will call and say, ‘I want to come to the game tonight. I want to see John Wall or Anthony Davis or Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.’ It’s become fashionable to be seen here, because people want to be seen and associated with success.

John Calipari

And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City.

Sanford I. Weill

I loss that fight to Phil Davis, but I’m not convinced on that fight. Because it wasn’t fair for me. I’d like to do another fight.

Lyoto Machida

Sammy Davis, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett… their records sell in the millions; when I do it, it just trickles. But for the composer and lyricist, there’s a tidy bit to be made that way, too, so I don’t really mind.

Anthony Newley

I remember listening to Miles Davis in the car with my dad. I had just done my Grade 5 piano exam, and I was quite cocky. I said, ‘It sounds like he’s played the wrong note there.’ I remember the look of horror on my dad’s face, and thinking, ‘Wow, I have to figure out why that is not acceptable.’

Laura Mvula

I always loved the bad girls in the movies. I loved Bette Davis; I loved Katherine Hepburn. I loved Ava Gardner.

Imelda May

I would absolutely love to do something with Viola Davis or Meryl Streep. I just think both of those women fall so deep into their characters that you are no longer looking at the actresses, you are looking at the characters they embraced.

Meagan Tandy

That’s why I enjoy Davis Cup, and I really enjoyed college tennis. It’s very special. You want to go out there and compete your hardest, because you don’t want to let anyone down. You want to absolutely give it your all for your team. And that’s sort of the mentality I’ve taken to pro tennis.

John Isner

Guys like Alvin Adams, Sweet D Walter Davis, Larry Nance, and Kyle Macy became my basketball heroes.

Peter Billingsley

A lot of people who were the best in their fields. I was fortunate enough to be friends with Sammy Davis, Jr. – I spent a lot of time with Sammy. I was over at his house almost every night. Those people were very special and very special for me.

James Darren

I haven‘t been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?

Kurt Elling

I don’t want to be judged next to guys like Suge Knight. I want to be measured next to David Geffen, Irving Azoff, and Clive Davis. Whether I measure up or not, I let my record speak for me. That’s how I want to be judged – by what I’ve done, not by what people like Ice Cube and Dr. Dre have said about me.

Jerry Heller

I’ve really enjoyed B.R.P.D. since its first days when Guy Davis was an artist on the title, and if anyone is looking for an end of the world Cthulhu apocalypse title, Mignola and Arcudi and the artists who work the title do a fantastic job.

Ben Peek

I learned a lot from Al Davis, and I got a lot better as a coach.

Jon Gruden

I know Charles Michael Davis. I used to play poker with him when I lived in Los Angeles.

Joseph Morgan

One of my favorite movies is Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve,’ and it is shocking there was no pressure on her to be likable.

Melissa Rauch

Khaki trousers soon became the province of hipsters like Jack Kerouac and Miles Davis. They were taken to new heights by Ralph Lauren, who helped popularize them among college professors and preppy men.

Roger Stone

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn’t get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one.

Martina Hingis

Miles Davis and Felonious Monk, they’re both great artists who enhance things.

John Gourley

Nobody cared about Baron Davis for so long, and then all of a sudden, it’s like all these articles are coming out. People are passing judgment or thinking they know me.

Baron Davis

In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.

John Madden

The strongest feelings I experienced were in Davis Cup. It was the most powerful thing: the victories and the losses. It hits you in a distinct way. It’s another level of satisfaction – another level of sadness.

David Nalbandian

There’s a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, ‘Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on ‘All in the Family’ tonight! Let’s go check it out!’ It was a big, big thing.

Sterling K. Brown

I was talking to a TV bigwig, and he said, ‘Nobody under 35 knows who Sammy Davis is.’ Well, you’ll hear angry denials of that from younger people.

Leslie Bricusse

At key crossroads in his life, Vernon Davis has continued to make a conscious choice to grow as a person and player. His determination through adversity since his childhood days is commendable.

Hannah Storm

I’ve grown up with jazz – the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff – but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved – interweaved – in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

Thundercat

Beauty is subjective: Bette Davis wasn’t beautiful, but she was more than beautiful.

Jacques Audiard

Having brought diversity to the air in the way that we have with Kerry Washington and Viola Davis toplining their shows, and then shows like ‘Fresh Off the Boat‘ and ‘Black-ish,’ have been very important. I look forward to continuing in that vein.

Channing Dungey

Miles Davis himself, I discovered him when I was 15, and he rocked my world.

John McLaughlin

I don’t want to be just somebody short who happens to act. I hope my legacy will be Warwick Davis, Actor.

Warwick Davis

I’ve always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns – one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.

Miguel Zenon

My dad was a club musician. He was always playing guitar and playing loads of soul records and ’60s rock n’ roll. Whenever he used to cook, he used to play Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, The Kinks, and the Spencer Davis Group – a lot of really earthy things.

Sam Fender

Angela Davis’s legacy as a freedom fighter made her an enemy of the state under the increasingly neoliberal regimes of Nixon, Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover because she understood that the struggle for freedom was not only a struggle for political and individual rights but also for economic rights.

Henry Giroux

My sister is a good story of resiliency. She had a full ride at UC Davis, but she left school to go to the Philippines – and then she decided to go back to school in her 40s, which surprised me. She went to UC Berkeley, and I think she was one of two African Americans in her class at Haas. She’s really impressive.

Chili Davis

Viola Davis is a perfect example of somebody who’s so much better than the parts she has the opportunity to play.

Mahershala Ali

I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due – she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.

Robert Osborne

I carry around a black leather Moleskine journal all the time. And I always write ideas down, especially when I’m on set and working with actors like Jeremy Irons and Viola Davis and learning from them.

Alden Ehrenreich

Even as a kid, I was more enchanted watching Bette Davis than Errol Flynn.

Richard LaGravenese

The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there – from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security – are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in.

Trent Lott

It’s funny, though, speaking of fathers and sons, because me and John Goodman played father and son, like, five or six years ago in the film ‘Death Sentence,’ and I got back with him again in ‘Inside Llewyn Davis.’

Garrett Hedlund

I have boxes of gospel LPs and 78s. The Davis Sisters, the Soul Stirrers, the Pilgrim Travellers. I love all that.

Wilson Pickett

I grew up on Bette Davis movies, and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe.

Charlize Theron

‘The Blacklist’ was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was not so much trying to adapt to television, but adapt a cinematic style to the things that we were gonna do.

Joe Carnahan

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that’s wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

Don Cheadle

Everybody makes a big deal about small ball. Well, I’ve guarded Anthony Davis every time I’ve played him, since he first came into the league.

P. J. Tucker

When it’s all said and done, jazz with a capital J is where I’m coming from. Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk – that’s what I really studied when I was a teenager and what really fueled my passion.

Jose James

I was very impressed with Davis Guggenheim’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ He’s inspired me as one of the newer, cutting-edge documentary filmmakers. I see those films, and I’m just instinctively drawn to them.

Peter Berg

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

Carlos Santana

I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.

John Coltrane

I’m such an admirer of Wendy Davis.

Nell Scovell

My dad loved jazz, so there was a little Miles Davis, Otis Redding, Donny Hathaway. My mum is French, so she’d listen to a lot of French music, but a lot of the music that actually formed my taste, I just found online.

Arlo Parks

Steve Davis has found a way of competing to a level that is not as high as it once was, enjoying his wins, and not getting too angry about the defeats.

Stephen Hendry

Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis.

Adam McKay

‘Quick Change’ was my first real movie. It was an interesting audition process because there were no lines in the script. Bill Murray’s character would say something, and Geena Davis and Randy Quaid would say something, and then it would just say, ‘The cabbie speaks.’ How do you audition for that?

Tony Shalhoub

I’m a big Geena Davis fan. I have a Geena Davis-signed baseball, which is funny because I don’t get signatures from most baseball players I meet.

Jessica Mendoza

To me, there are only a few tournaments that are important. The Grand Slams, Davis Cup, the Swedish Open; that’s about it.

Mats Wilander

I’m very close with Brian Davis, Thomas Hill, and Marty Clark.

Christian Laettner

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

Chick Corea

Music gives me a lot of peace, either classic music with its structure or the spontaneity of Miles Davis. It brings the best in you.

Mohamed ElBaradei

I did ‘Fences‘ off-broadway at the Beacon Theater, so it’s amazing that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis brought it to Broadway.

Omari Hardwick

I loved all those classic figures from the ’30s and ’40s… Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too – so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the way the studios would develop talent.

Grace Jones

Viola Davis is incredible – she’s kind of the biggest career-wise inspiration for me. Brilliant actor, so intelligent, so strong. The path that she’s made is incredible.

Laura Harrier

My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’ or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything – performances that have nothing to do with age.

Winona Ryder

I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.

Donovan

I have always admired stylishly confident women who dress with great authority. This lifelong love of elegance began with the humble wardrobe of my late grandmother Mrs. Bennie Frances Davis.

Andre Leon Talley

I listen to Miles Davis and Slipknot.

Steve Lukather

I love music, and a lot of it. Jazz is probably on the top with guys like Miles Davis. But I even enjoy music from the ’60s and ’70s.

Donovan Bailey

I feel British but my dad still has a filthy Scottish accent so I’m hearing that a lot… but the Davis Cup did help my exposure and my experience, so it was great for me.

Cameron Norrie

People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis’ record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row – there’s just too much to get through.

Jonny Greenwood

I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I’ve seen almost every one of her films, and she’s been very inspiring to me.

Elisabeth Moss

I may be paralyzed from the waist down, but unlike Gray Davis, I’m not paralyzed from the neck up.

Larry Flynt

So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.

Herbie Hancock

When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn’t afford a ticket.

Lauren Bacall

Everyone’s talking about Phil Davis and what he did in college. It’s an accomplishment to win an NCAA title. I don’t want to discredit that. But I believe if I would have wrestled him in college, I would have beat him.

Rashad Evans

My favorite artists are able to take things to the edge or just over the edge. Miles Davis and Duane Allman, for example. It’s about not playing too many notes. Those guys had lots of phases to their careers, but they always played with economy and intelligence.

Derek Trucks

When we came up, Clive Davis and other record execs would do anything to keep Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, even Johnny Mathis intact, because they wanted to keep alive a musical legacy. As a result, those artists were able to spend 30 to 40 years in the business and still make a living, still have a fan base.

Philip Bailey

I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.

Richard Griffiths

I had the opportunity to go up to New York and be on the ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ show with Michael Strahan and Vernon Davis and those guys. That was an opportunity that presented itself, and it was something different and fun. I had a great time. Those guys are really good dudes, and she’s obviously incredibly talented.

Greg Olsen

My mom and dad got divorced when I was, like, 8, and when I went to my dad’s house on the weekend, he’d play a lot of music: Miles Davis, Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Elton John.

Lil Yachty

Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.

John Madden

The Warriors team with Baron Davis, Matt Barnes, Stephen Jackson – that was an incredible team.

Mark Lanegan

I was lucky enough to win the Davis Cup in my first year in 1999. I won my first slam at the U.S. Open in 2001 and became world No. 1 later that year. By the age of 20, I’d done it all.

Lleyton Hewitt

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.

Cassandra Wilson

I worked with Mrs. Davis for four years, and then she realized, as the material started getting harder, that I had never learned to read. I was just listening as she’d play the song, and I’d play it back. When that happened, she got very upset and stopped being my teacher.

Beth Hart

One of the blessings I’ve had, really, for my entire career, is working with founders of companies, whether it was Bill Ziff at Ziff Davis or with Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo.

Dan Rosensweig

Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn’t consider himself part of a tradition.

Bill Laswell

You can’t replace Davis Cup with something else. Its love and lore won’t be surpassed any time soon.

Mardy Fish

I’d watch old movies with Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Bette Davis and long to be part of that glamorous world. A lot of that glamour is gone now. In my own small way, I hope I’m bringing some of it back. But it would be great if I could inspire women to dress up.

Imelda May

Miles Davis turned his back to the audience when he came out on stage, and he offended people. But, he wasn’t there to entertain; he was all about the music. I kind of do that.

Bobby McFerrin

I got to play in a crowd, play in Wimbledon finals, be the guy on a Davis Cup team for a while. Those are opportunities not a lot of people get. As much as I was disappointed and frustrated at times, I’m not sure that I ever felt sorry for myself or begrudged anybody any of their success.

Andy Roddick

I think there’s no reason the Davis Cup couldn’t be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.

Jim Courier

We’re trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.

Don Cheadle

If Miles Davis hadn’t died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn’t much else that would have got me into the studio… although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.

Phil Collins

It was never easy being Cicely Tyson. And it will not be easy being Octavia or Viola Davis.

Octavia Spencer

I used to be friends with Miles Davis. He didn’t like many folks. I lived across the street from him.

Rip Torn

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

Jimmy Smith

I think I called myself an entertainer on my son’s birth certificate. That sounds a bit Sammy Davis Jr. or Brian Conley, the sort of guy you just drop into a room and let them ‘entertain.’

Limmy

100

I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.

Lynn Whitfield

101

We’ve got to replace the statues of Jefferson Davis and JZ George in the U.S. Capitol, and the people of Mississippi ought to have a say in it.

Mike Espy

102

I was asked to be in Elton John’s band, Joni Mitchell‘s band, and Miles Davis’ band. I couldn’t do it.

Steve Lukather

103

I love Viola Davis.

Marcia Clark

104

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

Henry Rollins

105

I just really liked those trumpets and horns – Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie – and I honed in on that. I always looked for those big horn lines.

GRiZ

106

I didn’t grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it’s not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.

Trombone Shorty

107

I love beautiful black-and-white movies – anything Bette Davis, especially ‘Now’, ‘Voyager’, ‘Casablanca‘, ‘Mildred Pierce‘; anything by Orson Welles, Truffaut, or Godard; and ‘Paper Moon‘ by Peter Bogdanovich.

Suzan-Lori Parks

108

There’s a new Mozart, a new Miles Davis, a new Misty Copeland, a new Matisse potentially languishing in a math class somewhere. If we fail to introduce them to art, we fail humanity.

Renee Elise Goldsberry

109

I don’t want to be famous. I want to be secure. I don’t want the world. I just want a piece of it. I want people to remember Eric Davis.

Eric Davis

110

I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.

Rebecca Hall

111

I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She’s so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well.

Lupita Nyong’o

112

Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.

Joe R. Lansdale

113

I want to be known as a triple threat. I have aspirations to win an Oscar and a Grammy, and I also want to win a Tony. I want to be one of those guys like Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. that crossed all those barriers of entertainment.

Elijah Kelley

114

I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I’m an instinctive actress.

Essie Davis

115

No one told Miles Davis or BB King to pack it in. John Lee Hooker played literally up to the day he died. Why should pop musicians be any different?

Paul Weller

116

As a child, I walked with my friends to Rosa Parks Elementary and then to Ben Franklin Middle School. I rode Muni to Galileo High School. And thanks to amazing teachers who believed in me and supported me along the way, I was able to matriculate to another public school: the University of California at Davis.

London Breed

117

We all know what Al Davis means to the NFL, what he means to the Oakland Raiders. He is the Oakland Raiders.

Charles Woodson

118

I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn’t any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.

Kenny Ortega

119

Greg Davis, Ron Randleman, David Bailiff, Paul Rhoads, Urban Meyer. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of them as influences.

Tom Herman

120

When I was a kid in Adelaide, I dreamed of becoming No. 1 in the world, winning a grand slam and the Davis Cup for Australia.

Lleyton Hewitt

121

I liked ‘The Help,’ and I love Viola Davis. But I didn’t think that film was a great film; I thought that was a very uneven film. I thought the Southern women were so caricatured that it was kind of like ‘Harper Valley PTA’ or something like that.

Robert Osborne

122

That period in the late Eighties and early Nineties was when I was playing my best snooker. My trouble was that I had so many bad habits that my preparation was terrible: people like Steve Davis or Dennis Taylor were model pros.

Jimmy White

123

I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It’d be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of ‘Glee.’ I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.

Mark Salling

124

When I look back on my nine years with the Raiders, what comes to mind first is my great association with Al Davis. If it had not been for him I may not have done the things I did once I left Houston. I may not have even kept playing if it weren’t for Al. I respected him highly.

George Blanda

125

My favorite moment was in Game 6 when Bill Walton tapped a missed Sixers shot toward the backcourt and Johnny Davis ran it down as the clock expired. We were NBA champions!

Jack Ramsay

126

I don’t want to do many panel shows. I’m a comic actor, not a comedian. There would be something wrong in Steve Coogan or Julia Davis doing panel shows all the time.

Diane Morgan

127

I don’t just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett – those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.

Naturi Naughton

128

I’ve wanted to do a Sammy Davis Jr. story for a long time. It’s one of those pet projects that has to be done.

Eddie Griffin

129

People like Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Marlene Dietrich and Sammy Davis Jr. all walked me down this path of entertainment.

Dionne Warwick

130

I don’t generally like things that are too pedestrian. But at the same time, and if I’m in the right mood, hey – I ain’t gonna lie – I listen to Joni Mitchell. I listen to ‘Blue,’ I listen to Miles Davis.

Robert Trujillo

131

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

Jan Garbarek

132

I’m still good friends with everybody from ‘Teen Wolf.’ I still see them, and I go to Jeff Davis’ for ‘Teen Wolf’ night when I can. It was such a rewarding experience. That’s such a fun set.

Adelaide Kane

133

I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that’s where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the ‘jazz’ category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.

Leon Russell

134

In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song ‘Vivrant Thing’ and ‘Breathe and Stop’ off the ‘Amplified‘ album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.

Q-Tip

135

My father constantly reminded me that he named me after Angela Yvonne Davis, a scholar and activist who was well known for her work in tandem with the Black Panther Party. That felt like a purposeful, beckoning call to engage in strategic resistance and to fight for the oppressed.

Angela Rye

136

What is invaluable about Angela Davis’ work is that she does not limit her politics to issues removed from broader social considerations, but connects every aspect of her scholarship and public interventions to what the contours of a truly democratic society might look like.

Henry Giroux

137

Prince, you never knew what to expect from him from one album to the next. Miles Davis was like that. You know, once you get used to one style, boom, he switched it and, you know, switched gears on you. So those artists are very exciting to me, very exciting to follow their path, you know, and their journey.

D’Angelo

138

Bette Davis is my hero. I’m obsessed with her. I base everything I do on her.

Ruth Negga

139

It can be very thrilling being able to witness Viola Davis do her thing for hours and hours, but there are also no windows, and you’re just in a room for fourteen hours trying to keep it together.

Liza Weil

140

I am always available for selection for Davis Cup. If TA select me, then great. If TA does not select me, then there’s not too much I can do.

Bernard Tomic

141

If I’m going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.

Ice T

142

I used to listen to a lot of music in my studio – all the time. But as far as the music that interplays with my work, what I’ve done and still do is keep a lyric book and song title. The material typically comes from Eartha Kitt, Betty Davis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston.

Mickalene Thomas

143

I like to listed to the adventurous guys – the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose.

Herb Alpert

144

I’m thankful enough or blessed enough to be able to say that Miles Davis was a friend when he was alive, and he was a wonderful mentor and really, really funny, you know.

Prince

145

Old Hollywood icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Vivien Leigh, and Bette Davis are so inspiring; their style is romantic and feminine and their glamour mesmerizing. I love the idea of channeling that spirit on your wedding day.

Jenny Packham

146

In urban culture, Larry Davis is something of a legend.

Damon Dash

147

I keep saying that, if Samuel L. Jackson and Bette Davis could have a baby, it would be Taraji P. Henson. To me, she’s one of the greatest character actors of our generation, let alone leading ladies. She’s just phenomenal in everything she does.

Jussie Smollett

148

The eyes of some of the fans at Davis Cup matches scare me. There’s no light in them. Fixed emotions. Blind worship. Horror. It makes me think of what happened to us long ago.

Boris Becker

149

When I was 15, I was working for a radio band in Shreveport. Cliff Bruner, the hottest Texas fiddler of them all, was on the same package shows, playing for Jimmie Davis.

Johnny Gimble

150

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they’re icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.

Ryan Murphy

151

The Davis Cup should be home and away from the semi-finals as a minimum, I would say even the quarters.

Mats Wilander

152

All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I’m 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, ‘It was okay, I did all right.’

Whoopi Goldberg

153

Frank Sinatra was a great singer, but my favourite is Sammy Davis Jr. He had incredible versatility in his voice, often doing impressions of people. It’s always going to be classic, and you’ll never get bored listening.

Anton du Beke

154

Anthony Davis’ lateral movement is one of a kind.

Mohamed Bamba

155

I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.

Ziggy Marley

156

My dad is Jean-Paul Bourelly, a really prestige guitar player in Europe, and he toured with Miles Davis. I was always surrounded by the most prestige kind of musicians from Senegal, Trinidad, Poland, Nigeria, and all around the world.

Bibi Bourelly

157

Interestingly enough Miles Davis was an influence, and the way he approached harmonics. And one of my biggest influences was Dionne Warwick, early Dionne Warwick.

Philip Bailey

158

I got to play in a crowd, play in Wimbledon finals, be the guy on a Davis Cup team for a while. Those are opportunities not a lot of people get.

Andy Roddick

159

Tattooing is my social life, too, so most of my time is taken up with that. People like Henry Lewis, Mike Davis at Everlasting Tattoo.

Margaret Cho

160

Viola Davis should be a household name. So should Angela Bassett.

Rutina Wesley

161

I think all of us who kind of live within the sport recognize that Davis Cup certainly could be a little more visible if perhaps there were some adjustments made to it, and it was made a little bit more easy to understand for the fans, if there’s a little bit more of a start and finish line.

Jim Courier

162

Back when Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin were doing roasts, they were all friends. They knew each other’s children, each other’s wives, each other’s families. It wasn’t about being disrespectful. It was about being funny.

Charlie Murphy

163

It is like a Davis Cup or a Federation Cup match in that way but instead of cheering for your country you are rooting for your local team.It really makes it fun for the crowds and gives fans a different look at tennis.

Ilana Kloss

164

There will be no ‘Mommie Dearest‘ in the lives of my children, and no books like the one the Crosby boy wrote about Bing, or Bette Davis’s daughter has written. My children love me very much, and they are loved.

Don Ameche

165

It’s weird, because American films in the 1930s and ’40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we’ve taken a step backward in this sense.

James Gray

166

I was working with the likes of Steve McQueen, Matthew McConaughey, Viola Davis, just running the gamut.

Brian Tyree Henry

167

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

Branford Marsalis

168

Viola Davis, Patti Smith, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Julianne Moore. I could go on forever listing names. However… my greatest inspirations have, without a doubt, been my teachers, friends, and family.

Maya Hawke

169

My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’ or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything – performances that have nothing to do with age.

Winona Ryder

170

I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.

Esperanza Spalding

171

Viola Davis is just one of those actors who is never bad in anything. She could be in an awful film but you’d never come away from it saying she was bad.

Nish Kumar

172

To come back from injury to qualify my country for the Davis Cup final and then to win my third trophy, it means a lot.

David Goffin

173

I look at people like Picasso and Da Vinci and Escher and Miles Davis, and they’ll write or paint that one definitive masterpiece of maybe 50 that they have that’s really trying to go outside the box, trying to do something that’s tough. And then when you accomplish it, you look back and go, ‘Yeeaaaah – masterpiece.’

Lupe Fiasco

174

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

Barry Hannah

175

I look at the careers of people I’m standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they’ve been holding me up for quite a long time.

Dionne Warwick

176

I think that tennis has been in a place for many years without any change. Davis Cup and Fed Cup has always been a very exciting platform for players because it is such an individual sport, and we get to play a team competition. We love being part of a team.

Mahesh Bhupathi

177

I had a Stuart Davis poster growing up.

Rachel Kushner

178

I’m not head-strong, and I’m not egotistical. I understand certain things better now. I won’t be trying to be play everyday. There’s only one Cal Ripken, one Lou Gehrig and one Joe DiMaggio. What is good for them isn’t necessarily good for Eric Davis.

Eric Davis

179

When people are overlooking somebody like Phil Davis, it’s a dangerous thing.

Rashad Evans

180

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

Robert Quine

181

I don’t remember too much about Britain‘s Davis Cup win in 2015 but I remember thinking what an unbelievable run.

Cameron Norrie

182

I remember plastering the kitchen with Black Power pictures of Angela Davis.

Mary Beard

183

Everything musically, for me, there’s two kinds of music. There’s Prince and Jimi Hendrix and then Miles Davis and everything filters through that.

Ato Essandoh

184

I have sometimes played my best Davis Cup matches away from home when you stay in the moment a bit more. But it is tough when half the crowd are spitting on you.

Lleyton Hewitt

185

Phryne Fisher could walk down the red carpet; Essie Davis is something else.

Essie Davis

186

I love Viola Davis. I call her ‘Queen.’ I think she’s phenomenal. She’s so raw and so bold. When I first saw her was in ‘Doubt,’ and she just changed everything for me. Her performance was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and I think she’s phenomenal.

Anna Diop

187

I don’t think we listened to any rock n’ roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.

Butch Trucks

188

Viola Davis, she does have a lot of TV acting jobs, and she’s also a very, very accomplished stage actress.

Aaron Stanford

189

Chopin or Billy Eckstine or Miles Davis – that stuff helps me, more when I’ve already written and I need a little energy to keep editing.

John Leguizamo

190

Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.

Kate Christensen

191

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

Pete Sampras

192

My family wasn’t particularly political. Mom and Dad voted, but that was the extent of their involvement. In fact, I ended up going to U.C. Davis because, to them, Berkeley was too radical.

Jackie Speier

193

I wanted the opportunity to work with Judy Davis and Simon Wincer.

Jamey Sheridan

194

I’m not against Flash, and I love the work that people such as Joshua Davis do.

Jeffrey Zeldman

195

Whether at the Olympic Games or during a Davis Cup tie I am extremely proud and honored to represent my country.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

196

If I want to hear a voice, Lana Del Rey is very soothing, and I could just listen to her on repeat, but my real go-to that’s been very consistent for at least the past ten years is Miles Davis.

Antoni Porowski

197

You can’t talk about the NFL without the Raiders, the three Super Bowl championships, what Al Davis meant to the league.

Charles Woodson

198

I tried hard to create my own records when a lot of them belonged to Steve Davis, so to see someone else beat yours, you’d be lying if you said there wasn’t a twinge of regret there.

Stephen Hendry

199

My dream role? I think to play Sammy Davis Jr. and his life story.

Elijah Kelley

200

Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, ‘We’re done.’ After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, ‘Now I’m going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.’ Rather than play it safe, he went on.

Henry Rollins

201

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

Ted King

202

Miles Davis had me play and he hired me the following week and after that, everything broke wide open.

Miroslav Vitous

203

Davis Cup means almost everything to me.

Mardy Fish

204

Bette Davis was a close friend. She loved to have a good time.

Debbie Reynolds

205

Oh, yes, we were on location with Another Man‘s Poison, which I wrote for Bette Davis.

Val Guest

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