Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism.

I always wanted to be a lawyer,but I certainly never wanted to be a trapeze performer.

There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred.

I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had

A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.

Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.

I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

My parents were Orthodox Jews but not very regular Orthodox Jews. I was bar mitzvahed and all that. But God was hardly ever mentioned in my family. Franklin D. Roosevelt was.

The media ignores what is really going on.

I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.

What we have now in America is a surveillance society.

God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.

The women cried with one another, and it didn't seem to matter whether you were Jewish or Christian, you just mourned.

I don't have many Russian friends. My childhood friends are dead - either from bad health, or they died in perestroika.

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.

I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.

There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

When people ask me how old the Earth is, I tell them I don't know because I don't.

What I lack in height, I make up for in wicked good hearing.

The chains of military despotism, once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off.