The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.

Effective stream-of-consciousness narration is the product of verbal precision, not just of literal documentation. It is decidedly not a matter of unedited free-association.

A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of the American popular song.

When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.

As truly as God by His power once
created, so truly by that same power must God every moment maintain.

To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation... this is the difficult task which confronts our age.