I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.

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.

If you are going to dream then dream big, why spend time dreaming small?

(...) a man encased in ice, his eyes hard and his voice like a frosty exhale.

There can be no excellence without insight.

The pure modernist is merely a snob

The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere 'calculating machines.' It holds a position wholly its own, and the considerations it suggests are more interesting in their nature.

Though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God's eyes; that is, in our deepest reality.

When Donald Duck traded his wings for arms, was he trading up or trading down?

A good reputation is measured by how much you can improve the lives of others.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Pray God, keep us simple.