The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

I think the secret to the guy was that he was very simple, not stupid, but not a genius, and he ended up being something like an elaborately clothed emperor in a kingdom full of people with no clothes.

Genius lies in your ability to find solutions to problems you never thought you'd face, in a way that nobody ever thought you'd take.