Victor Hugo

I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a Jazz musician, that’s what I do.

Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn’t feel right to me.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.