The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.
I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.
Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.
Jazz music is the power of now.
Jazz is democracy in music.
Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
Then in came this script with another very low offer, and another drug addict and a depressing and difficult part to play. I thought, 'Why should I put myself through that for hardly any money?'
After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.
One of my proudest achievements is that when an authoritative book about Hungarian literature came out about a decade ago, there was a little article about me which said I was a Hungarian writer but pretending not to be. Bearing in mind I can hardly write a cheque in Hungarian, I was delighted to be included in the pantheon of Hungarian writers.
Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.