I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.