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

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

Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.

I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.

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