All Quotes

“All Questions Answered”

“I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email (let's drop the hyphen) Donald Knuth's Stanford University web page”

“It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). Song title (1932).”

“I think of music sometimes in terms of color [...] and [in a furnace] I like to see the flames licking yellow in the dark and then pulsing down to a kind of red glow.”

“[Sights enabling musical inspiration] The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician [...] Things like the old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night, or something someone said long ago. I remember I once wrote a sixty”

“As Bach says [...] if you ain't got a left hand, you ain't worth a hoot in hell.”

“[Expressing a liking for trains] Folks can't rush you until you get off.”

“You can't write music right [...] until you know how the man that'll play it plays poker.”

“[Y]ou've got to write with certain men in mind. You write just for their abilities and natural tendencies and give them places where they do their best”

“I know what sounds well on a trombone and I know what sounds well on a trumpet and they are not the same. [...] I know what Tricky Sam can play on a trombone and I know what Lawrence Brown can play on a trombone and they are not the same either.”

“My band is my instrument more than the piano. From an interview with Richard O. Boyer , as cited in "The Hot Bach”

“Playing "Bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. Look (August 10, 1954).”

“A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride”

“O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! " Tamerlane ", l. 177 (1884).”

“The happiest day”

“Sound loves to revel in a summer night. Al Aaraaf (1829).”

“Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute. To M”

“From childhood's hour I have not been As others were”

“And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view. "Alone", l. 20”

“Sonnet. To Science”

“It is with literature as with law or empire”

“Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness. "Letter to Mr. B”

“Vesalius in Zante”

“It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues. Sanctuary , (1903) part II, ch. IV”

“A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue. "The Other Two," ch. 1, from The Descent of Man and Other Stories”

“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it. The House of Mirth (1905), bk.1, ch. 6”

“He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. "The House of Mirth" (1905), bk. 1, ch. 6”

“No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity. "The House of Mirth" (1905), ch. X, pg. 69”

“After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist”

“I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie. Letter to John Hugh Smith (12 February 1909), published in The Letters of Edith Wharton”