Irving Berlin

Talent is only the starting point.

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

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Jazz music is the power of now.

We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.

I’m always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

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

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.