I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.

An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

Somebody asked me once, 'Do you think that swing will ever come back?' And I said, 'Do you think the 1938 Ford will ever come back?'

...but I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.

I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.

Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.

I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous.

In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as you expect them to behave.

Coaches who scrimmage all the time don't know what to practice.

You can't remain inactive in the face of injustice without, to some extent, being guilty of it.

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

By and large... the good's an illusion, little fables folks tell themselves so they can get through their days without screaming too much.