At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.

Some of my most neurotically fierce bitterness is the result of realizing how untrue people have become.

We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.

Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world.

Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain.

The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view