I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest ….

No one was more important to the game of baseball in the last half of the 20th century than Henry Aaron and no one writes about that supremely talent….

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever..

I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique t….

There is no communication in this world except between equals..

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America..

The flame is not out, but it is flickering..

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm..

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now..

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice..

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz..

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse….

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 phy….

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches..

We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these san….

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time..

Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not….

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience o….

I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives..

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes..

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes..