Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

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.

I'm going to bed, where I may die.

They pick a president and then for four years they pick on him.

The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.

If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.

I really just dabble in music; I really just did a few albums for my fans.

The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.

I had my moments when I got very frightened that I would not recover.

Though the meek shall inherit the earth, but don't forget: The poor are the ones who inherit the debt.

... they always tell us it's getting to the top that's hard. Climbing's the easy part. Sliding down the other side, that's the hard part.

The tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony.