“Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.”

“Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape so...”

“The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two oclock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Loui...”

“I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: Things will be better when you die, the people of my grandmas generation said as they worked themselves to death. Go...”

“Jazz is democracy in music.”

“The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.”

“If everyone helps to hold up the sky, then one person does not become tired.”

“It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many things that are not so.”

“I did point out that I have no prophetic gifts. I write books because I tried to do something more useful and failed. Since I've been trained to write, I do that as a defense against total despair....”

“I have to return some videotapes”

“In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public off...”

“...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, a...”