All Quotes

You need to have the same ideas to work as a team, to have a good team spirit. And you don't get there in a day or even a month. It takes some time to get there. ”

My real name is Joe Kennedy, but if you live in Massachusetts, you can't sign 'Joe Kennedy.' So, back in 1957, I stuck the X on my name to be different from those people in Hyannis Port. ”

The attitude that poetry should not be analyzed is prevalent among many who consider themselves experts on children's literature. But I suspected that kids like to look closely at things and figure out what makes them go. ”

I don't think anybody is a poet 24/7, only in those rare moments when a person is producing a poem. ”

My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians. ”

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy. ”

I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking. ”

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out. ”

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. ”

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz. ”