Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.

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.

They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.

At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave.

The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

Yeah," I said, "but you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude. Where shall we eat?

Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality.