Ira Gershwin

Love is sweeping the country.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

Each time I have the opportunity to play, it’s another chance to tell the truth.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

Jazz stands for freedom.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!