We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us."

Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?