That is the way a great master carpenter feels, or an architect or composer or anyone who creates anything - people want to be appreciated for what they have done.

Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.

Today's trend ends up in tomorrow's landfill.

I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.

The atmosphere was wide open in those circles that we traveled in.

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.

We met with the poet Frank O'Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.

A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington.

Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.

I wish to share and pass down some of my generation's traits, and encourage young people to create their own art, music, and literature.

Storytellers seldom let facts get in the way of perpetuating a legend, although a few facts add seasoning and make the legend more believable.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

What I don't like are pompous, pretentious movies.

Nature's Laws are the invisible government of the earth.

We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

I've always made music from the heart, and that's what I do.

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

I don't believe in having bands for solo records.

The state, frankly, could care less. Historically, the state has been able to use any religious point of view for its own ends. . . . The examples of government misusing religion are endless.

The real shame about the ending of the Guns N' Roses when I got kicked out wasn't just that I got kicked out, but Slash and Axl stopped working together