Artie Shaw

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

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

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

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

There is no script. Live your life. Soak it all in.

Instinct is probably the essence of past experience and knowledge stored up for later use. There are many, you know, who think that this life journey through the world is not the first one we have made. Haven’t you ever come across children who knew things that it was impossible for them to have learned? Have you ever gone to a place for the first time and felt sure that you had been there before? That’s one of the reasons I do not travel much.

Parents need to dial in and know what their kids are doing.

Common sense needs to be more common.

What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.

It’s terribly unfair that we should have to suffer like this.

There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat.

And you know, two heads are better than one.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

[on Diana’s Death] Disbelief, refused to accept it.

We may appear to be mean, but we’re really only frightened.

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

There are no limitations to any of our dreams.

Life is trying things to see if they work.