Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.

Commercialism that has absolutely no relationship to quality whatsoever, only quantitative assessment of a thing.

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician

Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.

Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.

Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.

The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.