Author

Ethics are more important than laws.

We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.

There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.

From Wynton Marsalis

Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.

From Wynton Marsalis

I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.

From Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

From Wynton Marsalis

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.

From Wynton Marsalis

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.

From Wynton Marsalis

Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.

From Wynton Marsalis

The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.

From Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

Kurt Elling

Max Roach

Herbie Hancock

Mitch Landrieu

Paul Horn

Authors with Opposing Views

Christian Scott

David Edwards

Al Pacino

Aldous Huxley

Arthur Miller