Artie Shaw

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

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

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

The more you play, the more you hear and the more you hear, the more you want to play.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.

People who are meant to be drawn to your music will find you.

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.