Artie Shaw

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn’t making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don’t understand the part of money in running a band.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

Shoot for the moon. If you miss you’ll still end up in the stars.

‘Swing’ is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a ‘swing band’ in music.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

People always ask, “Why jazz?” and I’m like “Why not?” It’s kind of like asking Seurat, “Why so many dots?” I imagine if you asked Bjork, “Why the Tibetan bells?” She’d probably be like “That’s just what I heard.” It’s the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.