If you're genuinely candid and expressive then you're never wrong, even when you are wrong.

Jazz is for joy. It's for euphoria, it's for emotion, and anguish, and excitement, and all of the joys that great art can produce, and if it loses that, then it's lost everything.

You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.

I hate the idea of turning jazz into homework assignments. I would never have a quiz saying, "Who's the clarinetist on the Hot Five?" I don't care. If you like the clarinetist, you'll know who it is.

Bing Crosby said that Armstrong is "the beginning and the end of music in America," and he wasn't far wrong.

People should not feel intimidated by received wisdom. You have to discover it yourself. If I tell you that Armstrong is great, it's meaningless; you have to hear it.

Humility is a very important trait in a critic.

Fear is like an illusion of a dangerous wall between you and your goal.

No man can escape the shadow of his own character." Let us hope we are casting the right kind of shadow!

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

I don't have to be logical - I'm a mother.

If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.

We do not need to prove religion to [people], but to show them that they are religious.

Working with Mel Gibson is a little like waltzing with a hurricane. It's always exciting, and you're never quite sure where it's going to take you.

I can't remember, because I never knew.

But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

Meanwhile let us cast one shadow in air and water.