One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers.

Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.

Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture.

When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to begin to recognize me.

Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.

Panic in Wall Street, brokers feeling melancholy.

My heart hurts that means I’m alive.

As the dew to the blossom the bud to the bee As the scent to the rose are those memories to me.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?

You gotta learn that if you don't get it by midnight, chances are you ain't gonna get it, and if you do, it ain't worth it.

America has enough problems without allowing people to come in, who in many cases, or in some cases, are looking to do tremendous destruction.

I do not like sitting idly by when something clearly isn't right. I feel... not trapped but something like it, and I don't know what to about.

Broadway is a definite symbol of New York. It's classic New York.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.