You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.

You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.

That's the clarinet I used to use... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything.

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.