Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas.

All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique.

I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert.

For suddenly, I saw you there And through foggy London town The sun was shining everywhere.

An entire composition written in jazz could not live.

A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation.