Richard M. Nixon

Hello, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

[On the word Jazz] There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, Call me Muhammed so-and-so. But what’s the difference? A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Talk of God is most often in church. Is there a God outside of church? I hope so. But how should I know? How does anybody know?

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Music must be an innovation.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.