I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's an active disengagement.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us."

History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

A place is not really a place without a bookstore.

Light has a battery life

In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule.

Is any pleasure on Earth as great as a circle of Christian friends?

You can never say you're big - I don't think you can ever take anything like that for granted.

Only changed people can change the world. Start with yourself.

Women are a colonized people.