Bob Dylan

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

There’s always room for improvisation or changes of expression.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.

The guitar is just a wonderful instrument. It’s everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It’s everything, but it’s elusive.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.