Chet Baker

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

He almost adds a Chet-like sound to it.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

He who seeks revenge should remember to dig two graves

Whatever it is, people who have more spare time than people ever had before get the sense of whirlwind pressure,and repeat the common criticism that ‘we are going too fast.’ Yet the people live longer than ever before, live with less effort, live on a higher plane. Is it possible that this common saying about our rapid pace is just another thoughtless mob suggestion?

These are our neighbours, our co-workers, friends’ children… the problem is closer than you think, but so is the solution.

Join the dance.

Man is a comparative being. Substandard things must go before super-standard things can come.

I am one of the people who love the why of things.

I think I am actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.

If you want more, you have to require more from yourself.

I have dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings. And I’ve never been too impressed.

You have the duty and gift of living. You don’t have the right to sit on the sidelines–use your life and get back into the game.

We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we’re capable of.

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Invention is the mother of necessity.