When you are trying to understand the world, it is unwise to assume that you occupy a privileged position in it.

It has been said that the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is so profound that it would occur only to a metaphysician, yet so simple that it would occur only to a child.

You have to have a temperamental attraction to dangerous ideas.

Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.

To abandon the principle of simplicity would be to abandon all reasoning about the external world

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.

Dogs aren't born knowing what or what not to do; they only learn like children.

I didn't study Greek mythology in school and I wish I had.

You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences.

People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.

In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.

I knew where I wanted to go, what kind of player I wanted to become and I focused on getting there.

When I try to sound like the contemporary sound, it never turns out that way.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

The fumes are killing us, and we wonder why things are going haywire.