George Gershwin

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.

When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they’re here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.

I used to play – when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

The guitar and the dog, in order not to be separated from man, have submitted themselves with resignation to the worst alterations of size and appearance.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.